20 Years on, the album with no name is… full of blood? Sure is.

I received an incredible suprise in the mail today, the ultra limited edition fall 2025 vinyl pressing of Wintersleep’s second album — presented in a clear sleeve, the jacket has been die-cut removing a section to reveal the record within — but here’s the kicker, the album has fluid inside, and oozes downward when you hold it up, they call it “blood filled”. So metal. 

I’VE BEEN REFLECTING ON THIS ALBUM A LOT RECENTLY,
IT’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY.

Wintersleep started in late 2001 and first played a show in March of 2002. The debut album was releases exactly one year to the day later, March 29th, 2003 — and while the focus of this album release show was on songs from the debut album, a brand new tune called “Jaws of Life” also made it into the setlist that night, marking a look forward towards a second album before the first one had hit any CD players. 

I haven’t played in Wintersleep since 2007, so I can’t speak to how they operate in 2026, but back then the band was pretty much always writing. Members Paul Murphy, Loel Campbell, Tim D’eon, and myself, were constantly at our Halifax rehearsal space working on new riffs — so having newer than new songs ready to be broke out at any given show was common place. I distinctly remember Paul playing “Listen [Listen, Listen]” for us at that jam spot and the feeling I had hearing it for the first time — we worked on it immediately and had it added to the setlist in no time. 

By August of 2003, all four band members had made the jump to be a band full time – dropping the notion of 9-5 day jobs in an effort to take Wintersleep on the road… the plan was to give it two years and see where we were then. New songs would get reworked, tweaked and fine-tuned night after night in front of our small but growing audiences. The band was young, scrappy, and full of bravado on stage, we’d all played in louder, heavier bands, prior to Wintersleep and the influences of those scenes crept its way into the live show. Wintersleep was quieter than most of the bands we shared the stage with, but the desire to amp it up certainly reared its head when the moment struck.

RECORDING

A few months after the debut album’s release were feeling excited to demo some new songs, there was enough money in the band account to possibly afford two to three days with local music producer Laurence Currie. He was famously known for his incredible work producing Sloan’s ‘One Chord to Another’, which netted the band their first Juno Award and a huge score of die-hard fans. I don’t remember the specific details but I think we were given some hours at local studio The Sonic Temple, either for free or close to free — so in the fall of 2003 we booked in for a weekend and were excited to try and get somewhere between three and five demo songs recorded. Bed tracks went down really quickly and by the end of the first day we had bass, drums, and guitars for all the tunes we had gone in with.

Laurence was feeling the momentum and was especially loving the Sonic Temple drum sounds and asked if we had any more songs? We did, but they would definitely be classified as scrappier “works in progress”… Feeding off of Laurence’s enthusiasm, we started throwing down more bed tracks. Our friend Chris Smith brought his camera in and took a few shots during these bed track sessions:

When the weekend came to a close I was teetering between two emotions — excitement from having started recording far more tunes than we had expected; and disappointment that none of them were completed, we’d spent our studio time (and all the ‘demo money’ we had saved) recording beds, but didn’t have any finished songs, we ran out of time before layering in vocals and guitar overdubs, or doing any mixing — there was no demo. It didn’t take long to realize we weren’t actually working on a ‘demo’, we had inadvertently started recording the band’s sophomore album. We moved operations from The Sonic Temple to Laurence’s studio, Idea Of East, located in an old warehouse in the north end between the two bridges and kept working there. 

The next eleven months were split between playing shows to earn money for studio time, and days recording at Idea of East. We’d quickly run out of money and go out to play more shows, then spend that money moving the recording process to the next post. This cycle continued for close to a year and felt like it was taking forever. The process presented an opportunity, however, time to go away from the studio and listen to the tunes at various stages of their development and the opportunity to go back in and change anything that didn’t feel right… Laurence would rip a CD at the end of each session and we’d go off separately with those mixes and often come back with new ideas to try. We’d often add or change something and keep doing so until it felt right. 

I didn’t realize at the time that this slow drawn-out approach would become my preferred way of recording. Every album I’ve worked on since has been under a very strict schedule and budget — a set number of days or weeks is all you get and what you have at the end is what you have to live with. Of the 8-10 records I’ve recorded in my time as a musician, this second Wintersleep album is the only one that I don’t feel compelled to go back and change. To me, it’s a fully completed piece of work and I’m proud of every second of music on there — I hope the guys feel the same. I’ve worked on lots of records I’m very proud of, but this is the only one that feels like it says everything it was meant to say.

Paul and Loel interview on MuchMusic with my old buddy (and bandmate)
Matt Wells at Idea of East (2004)

ARTWORK

We engaged our friend James Mejia, a brilliant visual artist and graphic designer (and insanely nice guy), about using his art for the album cover. He had been developing a collage series on wood panels and invited us to check them out at his home when we were in Toronto. We were immediately blown away — all the pieces were stunning, but there was an consensus that his piece featuring a skinless person just had to be the cover. James had included a subtle street sign and we asked him to make it “South St” as Loel, Tim and Paul all happened to live on that street at the same time (in separate apartments) when wintersleep first got rolling (and they might have still been in those apartments when we were making this album, I can’t remember). The band’s first jams were in Loel’s bedroom in one of the city’s tallest apartment buildings, on South Street. When we showed the cover idea to friends we received mixed reviews, some felt it was a quite gross, and others felt it was super cool… the fact that they were having strong feelings of any kind was good — this was definitely the cover.

Paul had the idea to include a short children’s story instead of a standard CD booklet of lyrics and thank-you-lists. I’d never seen anyone do something like this before and was all-in on the idea. Paul’s tale was about Tom, a young boy who had lost his heart – a nice tie-in to the character on James’ cover artwork that, in addition to having no skin, was also missing his heart. One of Paul’s brothers had sketched a head of a character that Paul showed me, stating this is what he wanted Tom to look like. I kept this drawing, but at the time of writing this couldn’t find it anywhere. I’ll include it here whenever it does show up. 

I had drawn a show poster earlier in the year with a couple odd looking animals – one of the animal bodies kind of looked like someone walking in a sleeping bag which I thought was cute. I placed Tom’s head on one of those animal bodies giving us our first look at Tom Kotter, the sad boy that lost his heart.

It didn’t take long to illustrate the rest of the story and we were off to print. In an effort to avoid the generic glossy paper that CD manufacturers always used — we printed the booklets with a Halifax company on a nice quality matte finish paper and had them shipped to Toronto to be included in the CDs. 

The band’s 2003 debut CD had been called “Wintersleep”, and since making up album titles wasn’t something the band was keen on yet, the new album would not be given a title — it would be listed as untitled… When James sent his first cut of the artwork with “South St” on the street sign we asked him to fade the text back and make it blend more as there was some fear that people might think the album was called “South Street”… Fading it back seemed to work. Non-existent crisis adverted.

James’ cover artwork looked great with no words, we didn’t want to clutter it up with the band name, so it was decided that a sticker would go over the CDs shrink-wrapping with the band name just to help folks find the album in stores. 

First 1000 CDs ‘pressed’ — no text on cover.

We were releasing the album on our own indie label/collective, Dependent Music, which we ran with our friend Brian Borcherdt and a crew of our buds. Dependent had a small but mighty stable of bands that included Wintersleep, Contrived, Land of Talk, Jill Barber, Brian Borcherdt, Heavy Meadows, Holy Fuck and Burnt Black, among others. When Dependent’s distributor realized that we were going to be in Toronto in the weeks leading up to the album coming out, they asked if we’d be into coming by their offices to put the stickers on our CDs. We were excited to get a first look at the CDs and gladly went by to meet the crew and help sticker the 1000 albums. This, however, proved to be a total pain in the ass and took far longer than any of us had expected. The backing on the stickers was very difficult to remove and it was immediately decided that if we ever needed to reprint this album the next batch would include the band name — no more damn stickers. 

The short-lived sticker, which in hindsight looked pretty cheap and scrappy – its good we got rid of it.

ALBUM RELEASE SHOW

Back home in Halifax, an album release show was booked for early February and the local weekly arts paper, The Coast, asked if they could set us up with photographer Scott Munn for a cover feature that would come out the same week as the album. It was a cold January when we boarded the ferry to Dartmouth, Scott wanted to get some shots from the water with the Halifax skyline in the background. Bundled up and kind of freezing we still managed to have a great time, and when the ferry dumped everyone out we wandered around Dartmouth taking more photos. Scott had the idea to wander into a nearby thrift shop — partially to see if there was a chance for a cool photo, and I expect, partially to warm up. 

At the thrift shop we chanced upon a set of super shiny jackets, two pairs of white pants and two pairs of red — it was a look and we leaned into the silliness.

A few photos were taken inside the thrift shop and then Scott realized we were next door to a curling club — somehow Scott secured permission for us to take to the ice, this ridiculous set location, along with the thrifted outfits, would become the cover of The Coast’s next issue.

Hitting newsstands two days before our album release show with the headline “Halifax’s biggest band”, the article created a blast of hype and left us feeling the pressure for our show at the Marquee Club. The shiny jackets and thrift store pants were broke out for the show. Laurence Currie was given a matching shiny jacket as a silly acknowledgement and thank you for the massive roll he had played in helping us realize the album — from the stage you could see him wearing it in the crowd (he’s quite tall). I honestly don’t remember anything about the show other than seeing Laurence out there, but I assume it went well, I’m sure I’d have ‘shame memories’ had it not.

Paul and Loel interview on MuchMusic, Feb. 2005
(includes footage from album release show)

I awoke the next morning still on a high from a really fun night and went to my computer to see that one of the biggest surprises of the album had been leaked…. Paul had recorded a beautiful song called “Spring” late one night at Dr. Piano (a Halifax shop that sells…. you guessed it… pianos), it was included as a hidden track. BUT, unlike most hidden tracks of the 90s and early 2000s where an the bonus song was added to the end of the album after a long gap (usually tacked on to the end of the last song), our hidden track was placed in what’s called the ‘pregap’, or the space before track 1. Let me explain: when you pressed play on the album it would start at song one, “Lipstick”, and play all the way through to the eleventh song “People Talk”, at which time your CD player would loop the album starting again with “Lipstick”…. But, there was a hidden twelfth tune that could only be accessed by hitting play on your CD player and waiting for “Lipstick” to start; then, you’d hold down the rewind button and thru the speakers you could hear it rewinding to the beginning of “Lipstick”, and then beyond (into the track zero ‘pregap’) into a whole other song, “Spring” – you would have to keep holding down rewind until the beginning of “Spring”, then let go and voila — bonus track is playing.

I know this sounds confusing, so I made a short video to demonstrate – having to go out to my ten year old car as it’s the only old school CD player I still have around: 

OK – so back to the secret song leak… In our excitement leading up to the album release we had told a couple friends about the hidden track, but the plan was to not say a word publicly, at all, potentially for years. The idea of folks figuring this out way way down the road was too fun and worth keeping it quiet… but when I logged into the old Dependent Music message board (our version of Facebook and Instagram back then) one of our buds had let it slip that there was a bonus track, and folks were already on the case. Oh my – that’s how shit goes sometimes. Mildly frustrated, we decided that the bonus track would only exist on the first run of CDs – so if you were one of the 1000 that have the CD without the band name on the cover, then you have the bonus track… all other Dependent Music versions would have the song removed. 

Later in 2005 England based One Four Seven Records released the CD throughout Europe with the inclusion of a previously unreleased bonus track “Damage”.

Sometime in 2006, a new record label collab between Sonic Unyon and EMI called Labwork Music re-released the CD — they included “Spring” and “Damage” on an enhanced CD segment – you’d have to put the CD in a computer and access the bonus songs (as well as a bunch of music videos) through a weird built in computer app. Of course, no one has CD drives in their computers anymore so getting access to this content on those old Labwork CDs is pretty much impossible these days.

Anyway, I’ve gone way off topic — I want to jump back to the morning after the album release show… 

After spending some time on the old dependent message board feeding my ego seeing if anyone had said anything about the show or new album, I sat on the floor and counted out all the money made on ticket sales, CDs and merch the night before (somehow I was usually the one that took home our pay after every show). I had the cash in neat little stacks on my living room floor. The plan was to meet the guys for brunch, so I started up my dish-washer and ran so I wasn’t late.

I returned home multiple hours later to a note on my door from my buildings Super saying water had been coming through my below neighbour’s light fixtures and they, along with my next door neighbour and the folks from downstairs had let themselves in to my place to sort the problem. It turns out that my dish washer had backed up and water had been gushing throughout my apartment, ruining hardwood floors, mouldings, and leaking down into the unit below me. YIKES! Here’s the funny part, I had no furniture in my living room. Only about a month earlier my girlfriend and I had split, she took all the furniture leaving me with my TV, stereo, guitars and computer. There was a bed in the bedroom, but, the living room (just off the kitchen) only had a sleeping bag spread out on the floor in front of my fancy (for the time) TV and stereo – no other furniture. And of course around the sleeping bag were all those stacks of cash I mentioned – we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars spread out on the floor around a sleeping bag in the middle of a water soaked furniture-less apartment. Miraculously, the water had stopped a couple feet away from the money, so all the stacks appeared untouched. I recounted it just to be sure and every cent was there. Clearly I had pretty great neighbours. They never asked about the money or my furniture-less living situation then or any time afterwards. But I can only imagine what they said about me behind my back. Not long after, my friend Janesta offered to help me pick out a couch and some chairs so my life as the guy with nothing but a sleeping bag and stacks of cash thankfully was short lived.  

TOURING

Within days of the Halifax album release we were on the road for St. John’s (where we’d played New Years Eve just weeks before) to start what would turn out to be two solid years of constant touring in support of the album.

Footage from St. John’s shows, Feb 2005

We sold our four seater Pontiac minivan when Loel found an incredible 17 passenger behemoth for sale on the side of the road — we needed more room as the addition of a 5th band member was necessary in order to include the various keyboard parts that were all over the new tunes. 

One of the only photos I have of the first van, and one Loel took
of the new beast the day he found it for sale.

The band signed with our first booking agent who got to work immediately and kept us very busy criss-crossing from St. John’s to Vancouver five times in just over a year (including 13 Montreal shows in 13 months).

Summer of 2006 introduced us to a world of live music we hadn’t been invited to participate in up until now — big festivals — we spent much of the summer playing with Sonic Youth, Flaming Lips, The Strokes, K-OS and Metric among dozens more at Hillside in Guelph, Virgin Fest in Toronto, Ottawa Blues Fest, The Wolfe Island Music Festival, and the inaugural Osheaga in Montreal. 

We dipped our toes touring outside of Canada too –– Germany, Switzerland, Italy, England, Ireland, and our first forrays into the U.S. with stops at festivals South by Southwest in Texas and CMJ in New York.

The trip to CMJ hit a major snag while crossing the border into the U.S., when asked what we did for a living we all said we ‘played in a band’, and when asked to provide our residences it turns out two band members didn’t really have permanent apartments at that time… We were touring so much that it made sense to stay with friends or family for the few days between tours rather than pay a fortune in rent for a place you were never in. After a three to four hour stay, border guards finger-printed us, and sent the whole band back to the Canadian side of the border with documents stating we were now ‘illegal aliens’ and banned from entering the USA for a year. We were told that if we even attempted to approach a border we’d be arrested and our vehicle and all it’s contents would be confiscated. Turns out the border folks don’t think playing in a band is a real job and they assume if you don’t have a permanent place to live then you must be trying to sneak into the country for nefarious purposes…. I stayed up most of the night at our hotel researching everything I could on how to rectify the situation, feeling solely responsible for getting us into the mess as I did much of the talking at the border — and clearly screwed it up. In the morning I called the same border office and asked to speak to the manager in charge, explained our situation — told him our band was a federally registered business that paid taxes and we were all legal employees… and we were quickly approved to carry on to our show in NYC. The form stating we were illegal stayed on my fridge for the next couple of years as a mildly humorous reminder to be more informed next time…

By the end of 2006 over 200 shows had been played supporting the untitled album, which had (annoyingly to me) now been fully named “untitled” by pretty much everyone we encountered. The idea was for the album to not have a title, rather than be called “untitled”… but what can you do, these things take on a life of their own. 

Every day on the road felt like we were finding new people for our music, but it was a slog. Late nights in bars playing our asses off and then loading up the van in cold sweat soaked clothes. We met lots of amazing people and made new friends in almost every city. To say we were having a great time on the road would be an understatement, we were almost always tired, but it was worth every moment of exhaustion and we were learning to sleep anywhere you could steal a moment of quiet.

Twice we toured across Canada with the incredible Regina band, Sylvie.
Once with Uncut and once with Contrived.

In November we played a particularly rough show at The Red Dog in Peterborough where the house sound guy was in a mood and derailed every bit of enjoyment we had for being on tour that night. This had become a bit of a repeating narrative, most nights were awesome but every week or two you’d encounter a house tech that clearly had lost their love for the job. They’d make the band’s evening miserable and often times do a shit job on sound while they were at it. After that particularly rough Peterborough gig, the idea of touring with our own sound person was ignited — the team was expanding yet again, thankfully we had bought that huge van.

We thought about all the places we’d played and which sound techs were great, both technically, but also the kind of people you wanted to be around 24/7. Top of that list was Chris Bell from Hamilton, he had mixed us many times and had lots of experience working rooms far bigger than we were playing, so we knew if we managed to keep growing he would be more than capable of handling anything our little band could throw at him. Chris was up for some fun, so he joined our early 2006 tour and became an integral part of the Wintersleep family. 

You should recognize Chris as after a decade as the band’s sound guy, he became the group’s touring bass player and has been holding down that position at the majority of their live shows since 2016. 

PEARL JAM

Every so often there would be an event that would positively shift things for the band at a greater rate than what we’d get from constant touring and putting ourselves out there… On the first album it came when Q104 started playing “Orca”, and then other stations across Canada followed; obviously Welcome to the Night Sky had “Weighty Ghost” and all the success that came from that… but the untitled album didn’t have any radio hits, “Jaws of Life” had a little Halifax play, but didn’t pick up much steam elsewhere. Music videos were made for eight of the eleven songs, and tracks like “Nerves Normal”, “Jaws of Life” and “Danse Macabre” did become obvious crowd favourites at shows, but on this album it wasn’t a song that propelled things forward…  that moment came when Wintersleep were asked to open for Pearl Jam in Newfoundland. 

We were contacted the day before the first show and asked if we were interested in opening for Pearl Jam, but there was a catch — we’d have to hit the road immediately (like in less than 2 hours) in order to make the nearly 24 hours of travel it would take to drive, then ferry, then drive more, to make it to St. John’s. We’d actually just got back from a tour, and band members hadn’t been home more than an hour when we got word that we had the opportunity for these Pearl Jam shows. Everyone had enough time to shower and switch out the dirty clothes for clean ones, then we were back on the road headed for Cape Breton to catch the ferry to Newfoundland. There were Pearl Jam fans on the same ferry crossing as us. One van full of fans had been following Pearl Jam’s cross-Canada tour and they had graphics on their van outlining their journey. We told them we were also headed to the shows, but didn’t say a word about being booked as the opener.

The Pearl Jam shows were fun, like so many before and after, but there was definitely something ‘extra’ about playing a couple arena shows with one of the world’s biggest bands and I don’t know if we were even fully aware of how things were about to change for our little band. Looking back, being asked to play with Pearl Jam seemed to add Wintersleep to the consciousness of their fans all over the world. The shows were just in St. John’s, no where else – but PJ fans far and wide made it a point to show up to our shows from this point on. Immediately after leaving St. John’s, our tours went from barely breaking even, to moving into bigger rooms, with higher ticket prices, in most cities. Audiences had been on a steady growth cycle since we had started playing shows a couple years earlier, but this was different — and we were ready to ride the wave. 

MOST LIKELY TO MOVE TO TORONTO

2005 closed with the album landing on a slew of ‘Year’s Best’ lists, we had our head down touring so much that I don’t think any of us realized folks were paying attention to the record. The Coast’s ‘Best Of… Awards’ had Wintersleep as their winners in five categories: “Most Likely to Move to Toronto”; “Best Canadian Music Video” (Danse Macabre); “Best Local Music Video” (also Danse Macabre); “Best Album Artwork”; and “Best Nova Scotian Band”, all of which felt both silly and beautiful. 

The band was nominated for “Alternative Album” and “Best Music Video” at the East Coast Music Awards, followed by our first Juno nomination, for “Album Packaging of the Year”, up against The Tragically Hip, Broken Social Scene and Matt Good… we weren’t massively surprised when we didn’t win any of those awards, but it was nice to see our name up there anyway. 

2006 East Coast Music Awards
Jaws of Life

ALBUM CYCLE WIND DOWN

In the early days, Wintersleep seemed to be on a two year album cycle. We’d take a year to make an album, then spend a year touring it. The debut came out in March 2003, untitled in Feb 2005, so it was no surprise that in 2006 the band carved out time between tours to work on demos for new material in hopes of having another record ready to go some time in 2007. Our great friend Graham Walsh, a member of the amazing Toronto band Holy Fuck was pulled in to help with some pre-production and demo recording. We started at a farm studio he often worked out of in Ontario, and then finished the demos at our old Halifax stopping ground, The Sonic Temple. 

Demoing in Halifax with Producer Graham Walsh and our bud, Janesta who sang some backups both on the demos and final recordings for Welcome to the Night Sky

At the end of summer in 2006 I was home visiting family and met a beautiful musician named Krista. She left an impression and four months later, on Christmas day, we’d go on our first date (and have been together ever since). Turns out her band had played a show with Wintersleep many months earlier, but somehow we didn’t meet then — neither of us bothered watching the other band’s sets that night either. Too funny. We were meant to meet another time I guess.

2007 started with a short American tour with a band called The Slip, followed by a run of American dates with The Tragically Hip and a stop once again in Austin for South by Southwest where we played one of the fastest and scrappiest shows of our lives to a tiny crowd of probably no more than 6-12 folks. Other bands we were huge fans of were going to be playing down the road… so we played our SXSW set at lightning speed, loaded the van even faster, and dispersed to go see the shows we’d been looking forward to all week. Little did we know that the tiny crowd included folks from a Japanese record label (Imperial) that would reach out weeks later and eventually release the band’s next album in Japan… lesson learned: record labels like it when you race through your songs and then duck out without saying hello…. :^)

After SXSW and a couple more gigs with The Slip, we hauled ass back to Halifax and went in the studio for three weeks in April to record album number three with a producer from Scotland we’d attracted to the project with those demos from a few months earlier. While working in the studio we got a call asking if we’d like to go back out on the road in a couple weeks for another leg of American shows with The Tragically Hip – the answer was an enthusiastic yes, of course. Much of May was spent watching The Hip demonstrate why they are legends. The tour ended in late May and we headed home, tired, for some much needed down time. 

Poster from Texas show. Photo from the last date of The ‘Hip tour, Towson, Maryland

The curtain seemed to be setting on the second album touring and promotion cycle. I couldn’t have been more proud of the music on that album. Collaborating with Paul and James on the artwork was equally as rewarding as making the music, and then getting out and playing those songs night after night felt like a gift I’d never fully understand what I’d done to deserve. Touring this album provided my first chance to visit the Pacific Ocean, and touring outside of Canada seeing parts of the world I’d probably never have been able to go otherwise was incredible. We met friends we’ll have the rest of our lives; had a German tour manager swear he’d never work with a band that drank ever again; drove through rain storms with windshield wipers that wouldn’t work; missed flights; had gear and money stolen; had punks unplug the PA system because they didn’t like our brand of tunes (this happened on my birthday, no less); we’d shared the stage with hip hop acts, dance bands, singer-songwriters, punks, rockers, ska and rockibilly groups, and hardcore kids… and had a great time with them all. To say that my life has been changed by this album is a massive understatement — these two and a half years writing, recording and touring opened up my world to so many adventures and lessons that I’ve taken with me every day since. 

I had no idea when we returned from that second Tragically Hip tour that I only had one more show before situations would lead to me no longer being in Wintersleep. Canada Day weekend we played an outdoor gig in Saint John, New Brunswick. The setlist included songs from our debut album, untitled, and a few new ones that would be coming out in a few months on the yet to be announced Welcome to the Night Sky. A local film crew captured the entire show with four or five cameras and promised to send me a DVD when they got it edited (which they did, a wonderful keep sake from an epic show). Afterwards we went out with friends to catch up and find some late night fun. We had played exactly 225 shows since releasing the untitled album in February 2005, and two days after that night in Saint John I let the boys know I was going to move back to Newfoundland, my time in Wintersleep was over — a decision I’d only made the night before. 

These years were arguably the most exciting of my life and I think back on them often, I’m nostalgic for that time and owe those great memories to the boys in the band — they’re talent, both as live performers and songwriters, blew me away back then and still continues to do so with each new Wintersleep album. They’ve had number one singles; performed on late night television, and massive stages that make the ones from my era look quaint. They toured Japan, and pretty much everywhere else. Never ones to look back, they released five more albums and have a sixth coming in the new year, plus solo albums by Paul (Postdata), Loel, and Jon, and multiple Contrived albums (Contrived features Tim, Loel and Jon). Chris’ popular late-90s band Chore recently reformed and released an amazing new album. Loel has gone on to produce incredible music for other bands; Jon has become one of Atlantic Canada’s most exciting DJs; and Tim, Paul and Chris are now proud wonderful Dads!! 

While I did play on Welcome to the Night Sky, I wasn’t there when it came out or for any of the hoopla that came with it’s incredible success. Untitled was the record I experienced from beginning to end, so it’s always held an important place in my heart and I think because of this, it will go on to be the album I have the deepest connection to (no offence to the others).

Happy 20th anniversary album with no title. 

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MUSIC VIDEOS

Meeting director Sean Wainsteim on the video shoot for Sore back in 2003 began an incredible friendship that would lead to working with the director on a bunch of music videos for the untitled album (and beyond). The first was for “Jaws of Life”. Filming was stitched into the middle of the band’s tour schedule and found them playing a show in Kingston the night before we were to make the drive from Kingston to Hamilton to meet up with Sean and his crew. Kingston got a little hairy when some friends from Constantines and other locals that came to the show and we ended up out WAY TOO LATE, which led to sleeping in way too late, and eventually arriving at the shoot hours and hours late.

Sean’s crew had been on site all day with a couple actors that were to portray a small narrative story interspersed with footage of the band playing live in the woods. Since there was no band to shoot, Sean filmed additional scenes with the actors for hours and when we arrived with only an hour or two of day light left there unfortunately wasn’t much time to capture the performance shots that Sean had intended. They had rain machines and as we were losing the light some live shots were taken of us getting rained on — the water was freezing cold and rusted the hell out of most of the screws in our guitars. We joked later that the rain scenes were punishment for being late. Sean edited together the footage he had, which was mostly of our actors making out in and around the scene of a car wreck (Jaws of Life) and when we saw the final cut we weren’t comfortable releasing the video, so it was never aired. We always felt bad about the amount of work Sean and his team put into creating the video (plus the money that was spent on it), but also knew it didn’t suit the vibe of that song so shelving it was sadly the best way to go.

Take Two

Sean agreed to take a second shot at a “Jaws of Life” video, he’d find a use for a tiny bit of the band footage and kissing couple from the original, but most of the video would be brand new content using a photograph based stop motion animation technique he had success with in the past, most notably on the video for Modest Mouse’s breakout hit “Float On”.

We had recently become friends with Blue Rodeo drummer Glenn Milchem who agreed to star in our new video along side a bunch of new pieces of collage art made by James Mejia. Everyone was VERY happy with this video, and we were never late for a shoot ever again.

Sean also worked on videos for “Faithful Guide”, “Danse Macabre”, “Listen [Listen, Listen]”, and later for “Weighty Ghost”. Other videos included animated ones for “Insomnia” (by Jesse Luke), “Fog” (by Mirco Chen), a German produced video for “Lipstick” and low-budget fun video for “People Talk” (by Dounia Mikou). I always thought it would be fun to have videos for every song on the album but that was far too ambitious. Many of these are floating around the internet on Youtube or wherever.

A few images from the making of “Danse Macabre” and “Faithful Guide” videos.

REISSUES AND EVOLVING COVER ART

In 2015, Wintersleep signed with Dine Alone Records and shortly after the label started looking into reissuing the band’s first three albums. There had been a limited 1000 copy pressing of untitled in late 2005 – it featured a different album cover using another of James Mejia’s pieces of art from the collage/wood panel series. The Tom Kotter story booklet was replaced with a poster that included lyrics on the back. Until 2015 that first pressing had been the only vinyl version of this album. Copies sold out long ago and were going for stupid high prices on Discogs, it was clearly time for a reissue. 

Original 2005 LP. Only 1000 pressed. Alternate ‘LP only’ cover art by James Mejia

It was decided very early on that the 2018 reissued LP would go back to the original artwork that had been used on the CD release back in 2005, not the alternate LP cover art. Loel owned the original skinless guy art James made back in the day and he mentioned that it had been aging over the dozen or so years he’s had it in his home. The acrylic layers were cracking, and there seemed to be some reddish spots appearing almost like rust… he sent a photo and we could all see the obvious changes the years had taken on the artwork –– the wood was darkening in colour and cracks were forming in the acrylic James had poured over the artwork back in the mid-2000s. The idea to rescan the piece and use its aged version for the reissue seemed like a fun idea. So in 2018, the Dine Alone reissues appeared in two versions: a 180gram black pressing; and a limited edition red version of which only 150 were pressed. Both came with the bonus 7” including songs “Spring” and “Damage” (black vinyl for the regular pressing, and white vinyl for the 150 limited editions), and the Tom Kotter story book was enlarged to 8 inches by 8 inches (the originals were 4.5×4.5).

2018 Reissues

Now we jump ahead to 2025 and Dine Alone’s interest in celebrating the 20th anniversary with fresh represses. Loel pulled out the skinless dude original art piece once again, and what do you know, it has aged a lot more in the eight years since we last looked. The wood had darkened much more and the grain had taken on an almost northern lights vibe, while the acrylic cracks were deeper and much more visible. A fresh scan was made and the 2025 reissues reflect the continually aging process of James’ beautiful artwork.

There are three pressings available – 150 black – 150 Dine Alone exclusive swirl – and 700 standard marble. They each include the 8×8 Tom Kotter book from the 2018 reissues (with one minor change made to the outside back cover), but there are no bonus track 7”s in the new versions. The 2025 gatefold jackets do come with a slick spot varnish, however, loosely making it look like the acrylic sections are wet or shiny. A new printed innersleeve was added, rather than the standard white paper ones that were used in previous pressings. The innersleeve features another of James’ original 2005 collage/wood art pieces (artwork he made as part of the series in 2004, but has never been used in any of the album pressings until now). You can still find copies of the 2025 reissues (and pre orders for the new 2026 album Wishing Moon) here —> https://www.dinealonestore.com/collections/wintersleep

2025 Reissues

Then, like we needed anything else in 2025 to cap off this 20 year celebration, Dine Alone sprung the ultra limited edition “Blood Filled” Record Store Day exclusive pressing – with only 50 copies it’s actually the most limited pressing of the record ever released. Thanks to Dine Alone for making sure this anniversary closed out in such fine form. Opening that album in the mail earlier today teleported me back to opening the first versions of the CD at our distributors office in Toronto, how exciting it was to see the album for the first time, having no idea all the fun and adventure it would bring us, and certainly never thinking it would still have an audience twenty years later.