After listening to the new album by Halifax golden boys Wintersleep, a quote from When Harry Met Sally popped into my head. During one of the transition scenes in the film where elderly couples discuss their fortuitous love connections, a woman says, about meeting her future husband for the first time, “At that moment, I knew. I knew the way you know about a good melon.” The same is true for music. Often when you first hear an amazing album, you just know it will be one of your favorites for a long time. I'm sure most serious-minded music fans have had that feeling at some point—something clicks in your head and a grin forms on your face.

Unfortunately, I don't get that feeling while listening to New Inheritors. Wintersleep obviously tried to create an engrossing, unforgettable album. The production is crystal clear without sounding generic or overprocessed, the album cover is pretty great, and the band exudes earnestness throughout the album. From the introductory (and totally out-of-place) string section on, it is clear Wintersleep wanted to produce something epic with New Inheritors. Unfortunately, it takes more than dramatic gestures and good intentions to make a memorable album. Bands can't just take a few good songwriting ideas and stretch them out over 53 minutes; by doing so, they create something stale, muddled, and forgettable.

Perhaps this lack of ideas explains why certain songs on New Inheritors sound so similar to some of Wintersleep's contemporaries. It's hard to listen to “Encyclopedia” and not be reminded of The Thermals (current day Thermals, specifically), and “Mirror Matter” has moments when they could easily be mistaken for Band of Horses. These instances of unoriginality are surprising considering the history of the band. Wintersleep has been around for a long time and has garnered all sorts of acclaim, including winning the Juno award for Best New Artist. It's disappointing to see them perform what are essentially rehashes of music by other bands. To make matters worse, Wintersleep occasionally matches this uncreativity with some rather hackneyed lyrics. “Encyclopedia” features the clunker, “Are you alive, does it still hurt? Yeah, you're alive, but what's it worth?” while “New Inheritors” opens with the similarly painful, “New inheritors of Earth, you overestimate your worth.” Lyrics like these wouldn't inspire deep emotional responses even if interesting music was backing them.

The one bright spot on the album is “Blood Collection,” which features a chorus that begs you to sing along (even if that means chanting: “Stack of government checks! Stack of government checks!”) and an instrumental outro that remains exciting throughout rather than slowly growing dull. There are some promising songs on the album that could have joined “Blood Collection,” but they all include questionable songwriting choices. “Mausoleum,” for example, builds to an intense climax at about the halfway point with some bad-ass guitar wailing. Then, for whatever reason, a similar climax happens three minutes later, as if Wintersleep is trying to remind us about what happened earlier in the song rather than hide the fact they're out of ideas. Elsewhere, “Trace Decay” suffers the same fate. The opening minute and a half is catchy enough, but then the same musical phrase that opened the song is repeated again, rendering that first minute and a half obsolete. The lesson here is that grandeur does not necessarily come from beefing up song lengths. Wintersleep should take note of that and be content with writing short, straightforward songs rather than unnecessarily long and repetitive ones. Unless, of course, they are able to come up with enough ideas to warrant longer songs. On New Inheritors, they rarely do.

Track List:
1. Experience the Jewel
2. Encyclopedia
3. Blood Collection
4. New Inheritors
5. Black Camera
6. Trace Decay
7. Mausoleum
8. Echolocation
9. Terrible Man
10. Preservation
11. Mirror Matter
12. Baltic