4 out of 5

Label: Murailles Music, Hublotone, Sub Rosa

Produced by: Winter Family

I think I’m unintentionally rolling my eyes as I describe Winter Family’s On Beautiful Days as poetry, but the pitter-pattered flat delivery of the lyrics fits; the tendency toward ambience in the music similarly vibes; and there’s a generally open-ended, always-beginning-and-ending tone to the whole affair that feels like wandering across someone reading from their journal, in a drum circle, in the middle of a field.

Okay, I just rolled my eyes again. When I further mention the elements of electro pop and dub that happen, you might be tempted to keep rolling. But – imagine these elements done tastefully: balanced with precise production and patient compositions; performed unselfconsciously, but with awareness of melody. Having trouble imagining it? Exactly.

This was my roadblock when listening to Beautiful Days: on the surface, it triggers some cringe for indulgence, and yet I kept coming back to it. I kept being surprised. And it’s very much due to that tastefulness and balance – the way opener We Forgot We Can’t Fly takes its time to crawl through space-creating ambience for dropping its repeated titular line on us; Daughters of Jerusalem’s autotune and ragga is also buried under distant psychedelia and creaky noise; the catchy electro of His Story is paired with minimalist piano plunking on the gorgeous and sad Black Sun. These choices perpetuate across Days, down to the choice of when the vocals switch languages, creating fascinating tonal tradeoffs the further we get into things.

It’s a dense, purposeful listen. …With some lesser refined moments that leaves some songs without conclusions, and at least one out of place “I guess we’ll put this here” track – though to be fair it’s only a minute long.

On Beautiful Days is, wholly admittedly, something that a passing listen would never have swayed me. But committing to giving the whole album a chance, the magic was there, fiercely batting my surface judgements away.