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Sound Advice: Hymns of Love and Spirits by The Wilderness of Manitoba
Every Tuesday, Torontoist scours record store shelves in search of the city’s most notable new releases and brings you the best—or sometimes just the biggest—of what we’ve heard in Sound Advice.
The buzz around local dreamy folk group the Wilderness of Manitoba continues to build in some pretty likely places, and it’s easy to see why: their debut EP, Hymns of Love and Spirits, is an ethereal, reverb-soaked finger-picking slumber party with lush harmonies and sad overtones. It sounds exactly like the name suggests, playing almost like a paint-by-numbers indie folk guide, and its overly precious repetition is actually easier to roll your eyes at than it is to love. But there’s an unnerving quality to it too—it’s more than just starkness (calculated) or nature noises (really?), and if you do a little digging, the hidden loss and hurt give it a raw edge that the campfire quality never could.
The shape of The Wilderness of Manitoba’s sound was formed in much the same way as brother band Provincial Parks (the bands share Scott Bouwmeester and Will Whitwham)—in the basement of their community home/rehearsal space/studio/sometimes venue, The Delaware House. A bit of seclusion and recording restraints no doubt lend to the cabin-infused Bon Iver moments on the disc, but the softness of “Manitoba” is more hippie-folk sway than the devastated ache Mr. Vernon shared with the world on For Emma, Forever Ago. It’s an influence that’s played a little too far from the chest, though, and together with all the Fleet Foxes love going ’round, the biggest weakness in this EP is that you’ve heard it all before. Recently. And very frequently.
But still, something lingers after the hypnotic Red House Painters pacing of “Dreamcatchers ” (streaming above), an existential monologue one can only have after a monumental personal loss, or the throwback minor-key simplicity of “Evening,” a mash up between a best-of folk compilation that Time Life might release and every over-sensitive indie fan’s iPod. Included as a bonus track is the original version of “Evenings”; written and recorded in the ’60s by an unofficial student of Baez, Whitwham’s mom, Wendy Blackburn, and included to pay tribute after her passing, the roots of the very reason and sound of this band and this EP are in this track. It’s a small—but heavy—gesture, one that, once uncovered, strips the cynicism from the coldest of keystrokes and instead instils a quiet solemnity and reflection from which, help us all, none of us are ever fully exempt.