Winter Spirits

There should be a warning on the album cover "Do not operate heavy machinery or drive an automobile while listening to this CD." The very first sound is a splash, and believe me it's your consciousness taking a dive into the deep end. It's interesting the attention Charlie Roscoe (the brain behind Jairamji) gives to creating environments. On several of the tracks you'll hear birds, streams & waterfalls. These sounds gently enhance the aspect of "another time another space", which is essential for a nice variation of the chill. This album is a vacation for your mind. Everyone needs a way out from the daily grind, and Kindred Spirits is a four star vehicle…

At its best, Samira Winter’s Ethereality recalls the songwriting of Weezer’s blue album and the feeling of Last Splash-era Breeders and Malkmus’s pop distortions. On the song “Blue Eyes, ” she even explores some of the terrain mapped by Beach House. Utilizing soaring, anthemic dynamics and universally relatable topics of young adult insecurities and struggle, she’s pushing the limits of her guitar playing and stretching the conventional confines of what a pop song is supposed to be. It’s easy to describe this as “dreamy” or “sun-drenched” pop … but there’s something more elusive happening. While this album might seem easy to interpret at first, repeated visits reveal a melancholy undercurrent masked by bright arrangements. Really, Ethereality is based on an artful examination of post-millennial emotional confusion.