New Lullatone: While Winter Whispers

THE CHALLENGE: Can Lullatone make the author of this blog feel good thoughts about winter, his least favorite season?

THE PARTICIPANTS: Nagoya duo responsible for sweet, nostalgia-glazed music that sometimes leans towards the whimsical. On the other side, some blogger who hates winter.

THE MUSIC: Lullatone have been celebrating the seasons over the past six months, with the summer and autumn installments of their series sounding especially bouncy and jingly. The winter addition easily could have followed this mold…just imagine the Christmas-centric song…yet Lullatone have opted to make a slowly unfolding album that’s far from twee. The tracks here stretch out, and the bells that usually turn the duo’s music into playroom affairs have been flipped into twinkling details that still sound sweet…but with everything else sounding so cold, they sorta have to.

“A Little Song About Snowdrops” sets the mood…the bells chime, but everything sounds covered in a light layer of ice. Some of the songs are especially skeletal, like “Tiny Glaciers” and the sweet throwback to Lullatone’s earlier days “Falling Asleep With A Book On Your Chest.” The closest Winter Whispers gets to tweedom is “All The Optimism Of Early January,” and even the rumbling build of that song comes off as restrained. It looked like Lullatone had chosen to embrace a purely whimsical sound at some point a year or two ago…yet this album throws a fantastic curve into the machinery.

THE VERDICT: Part of the reason this album works is because it’s not a celebration of Winter per se, but rather reflective of the season. Everything is slower, colder and sounds better inside. I like this collection, but still counting down the days until Spring.