We Are Winter's Blue And Radiant Children "No More Apocalypse Father"

WE ARE WINTER'S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN (WAWBARC) is the new quartet of Mat Ball(BIG|BRAVE), Efrim Manuel Menuck (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion),and Jonathan Downs and Patch (both Ada). On "NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER" they presentsix modal lullabies drenched in seared distortion, slathered across striding electronic pulses.Ball and Menuck began creating music in and for the bleakest moments of Montréal winters:"We're honoring that idea of winter, when you come inside and your house is warm, a placethat only exists because of how cold it is outside," says Menuck. They later recruited Downsand Patch to flesh out their initial ideas. Menuck met them in 2015 when recording Ada'sfinal album at Montréal's Hotel2Tango _ where they reconvened to make this record."NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER" is an album about witnessing bleakness from a place ofsafety. Carrying newfound descriptive depth, thanks to the quartet's open-ended songsfreeing him from writing in meter, Menuck likens his lyrics to photorealism. On opener `Ratsand Roses' he sings of an unnamed city struck by an unknown cataclysm, but the details arelocal: specifically, his neighbors inadvertently poisoning birds when tackling a rat infestation.It's backed by blown out synths and guitars reaching a soaring crescendo. "Seeing thingsfrom a distance and not being able to intervene happens a lot on the record," Menuckexplains. "If you're a feeling and thinking person, that's just part of the human condition.We watch horror unfolding from afar, unable to do anything concrete to change it."A powerless witness, able to describe but not intervene. `Dangling Blanket From A Balcony(White Phosphorous)' references Michael Jackson holding his child over a hotel balcony in2002_the bizarre media spectacle still lodged in Menuck's psyche. This and the album'sclosing track also elegize white phosphorous, a technology of war designed to light upbattlefields but capable of inflicting horrific burns on those it touches...