Midwinter Swimmers – The Innocence Mission – Album Review
by Cathy Brown

The Innocence Mission has been making music for thirty-five years but they are a band that seems happy to remain on the periphery. Both celebrated and under-appreciated, their other-worldly, meditative folk music always contains an undercurrent of comfort. They don’t often change what they do but manage to stay true to their distinctive sound without ever feeling stale.

The band — made up of spouses Karen and Don Peris and bassist Mike Bitts — have been friends and collaborators since their school days and the music they make together is wonderfully organic. Midwinter Swimmers, their thirteenth studio album, feels more expansive and richer than their previous work without forsaking their core sound. Listening to it feels like returning to an old friend and paying tribute to their consistency of vision and sound.

Musically embracing the delicate strength of Peris’ breathy, childlike vocals, Midwinter Swimmers features a bucolic, wistful sound which marries a pared back folk vibe with cinematic arrangements. Peris has said that the band wanted to capture the ‘half-remembered beauty of singalongs in their 1970’s childhood’ and the album aches with melancholy and quiet beauty.

Opening track ‘This Thread is a Green Street’, is vintage Innocence Mission, melodic with layered vocals that recall The Mamas and Papas, featuring hushed acoustic guitars and percussive tambourine. ‘We Would Meet in Centre City’ features some of the best vocals Peris has ever recorded – her angelic voice both strong and delicate – which brings a hymn-like sense to the song.  There is more than a hint of Sufjan Stevens in this track, which is interesting given that his cover version of their 1999 song ‘Lakes of Canada’, brought their music to a wider audience.

‘John Williams’ is as rock-inflected as The Innocence Mission is likely to get, with a strong percussive foundation while ‘Cloud to Cloud’ features a fuller arrangement while retaining a diaphanous melody.

‘Your Saturday Picture’ and standout track ‘Sisters and Brothers’ lean into a bossa nova sound, while ‘Orange of the Westering Sky’ is most influenced by Joni Mitchell, embracing a Laurel Canyon sensibility and poetic confessional lyricism. Many of the songs on this album deal with longing and being apart from those you love and Peris’s lyrics are both obtuse and riveting, blending mentions of colour, doorways and nature to create a dream-like pastoral landscape.

‘I don’t know where I’m going but it’s alright’ Peris sings on ‘Cloud to Cloud’ yet Midwinter Swimmers feels like an album that knows exactly where it wants to be. It might initially feel like comforting background music, but this is a rich, subtly textured record, created with exceptional finesse and singular vision. Yes, Peris’ voice can occasionally feel precious and is possibly not for everyone, but for those who – in a world of ever-changing musical fashions – cherish what The Innocence Mission do, their latest offering is a gift to be welcomed.