This is an excellent album. Memorable tunes, beautiful jangly guitars, superb vocals, and clever, if at times naive, lyrics. Perfect, you'd think - so why four, rather than five stars?
It's because Wintersleep don't yet sound quite like themselves. They're a hotch-potch of their influences - Snow Patrol, Interpol; Astronaut is so like mid-period REM, it could be an outtake. Yet the songs, in themselves, are great. Drunk on Aluminium, Weighty Ghost, Oblivion - all superb. My particular favourite is the touchingly adolescent Dead Letter and the Infinite Yes. But there really isn't a duff track on the whole album.
I saw them live last year, and they were good enough for me to buy Welcome to the Night Sky. Now, having got to know it really well, I'm convinced that there's a genuine 5-star album just waiting to be made - an album that sounds like Wintersleep, and nobody else.