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Whsitle Peak – Half Asleep Upon Echo Falls

Album review

The fact that the vinly version of this album comes in the teal coloured isn’t much of a surprise, the dreamy, mellow look of the colour fits with Whistle Peak’s lo-fi, melodic approach. Second track ‘Hurry Hurry’ has the woozy atmosphere of a bar jam taking place after numerous whiskeys through the fog of cigarette smoke.

There’s a kind of Elbow-esque crescendoing to the tracks, in the same vein as Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear. There’s plenty of melancholy too; broken hearted, intimate acoustic numbers strike a chord with the grim, grey days of a British winter (although the band themselves come from Louisville, Kentucky).

I’m not normally too into the nu-folk-revivalist movement which seems to have broken through over the past couple of years, but there’s an honesty of ‘Half Asleep Upon Echo Falls’ which breaks through any possibly lazy comparisons and makes it an indie release well worth seeking out.

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