New music: Winter – Healing (Bar None Records)
Hypnotic, distorted, gentle but clear – sink into the new single from LA-via-Brazil dreampop artist Winter.
- Follow our New Music 2020 playlist for a weekly update of fresh releases.
Artist: Winter
Track: Healing
Label: Bar None Records
Released: 19 June 2020
Find it: Spotify | Bandcamp
Ankle deep in bone-chillingly cold water the tide pushes and pulls gently and insistently against you. The sand shifts beneath your feet giving a visceral awareness of the world moving and the illusion of stillness you hold. Everything bends around the light, the flow, the feel. You bend with it, succumbing.
On latest single Healing, LA-via-Brazil artist Winter (Samira Winter if we want to get personal) there’s a melodic moulding and a vocal coolness which doesn’t just drag you in but makes you part of their musical world. Taken from forthcoming album Endless Space (Between You & I) the track is probably best pitched in to the dreampop genre, but that misses much of the vivid yet understated detail – shoegaze and drone passages, experimental twists and reversals, traditionally influenced refrains.
“I keep looking to find ways of healing / I’m so done with the way that I’m feeling”
With a gossamer light delivery belying the deep introspection and personal nature of the lyrics there is an ’80s clip to the percussion bringing to mind the alt-pop of The The as much as the spiralling patterns of Mazzy Star or the echoing spaces of Everything But The Girl.
In under three minutes Healing gives the sensation of timelessness, of feelings which never really leave us even if they fade, and the memories we are pinned to and to which we must return as surely as that tide returns to shore. It adds the detail of manipulated sound missing from much dreampop, immersing you, bending around you and within you.
Find Winter: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp | Spotify
- Follow our New Music 2020 playlist for a weekly update of fresh releases.
This is the first New Music piece we’ve published on the site. While we remain committed to long-form writing which explores creativity and creative natures, supporting new artists and new music is important. This seems like a way we can play a small part in that. If you’d like to contact us about being featured on the site please take a look at the info here first.
If you have enjoyed reading this piece on Popoptica you can buy us a virtual coffee via Ko-fi – every donation helps us to do what we do. We’d love it if you shared on social media too – and do join the conversation with us on Twitter and Facebook.
Sarah Lay
A long-standing music journalist she's also co-founder of independent record label Reckless Yes, an author of novels, and when not messing around with words and music, a digital strategist.
Latest posts by Sarah Lay (see all)
- Porridge Radio – A Hole In The Ground (Secretly Canadian) - 24th September 2024
- Rain Cloud Nine – Ephemeral (self- released) - 23rd September 2024
- ARXX – Swim (Submarine Cat Records) - 20th September 2024