4 To Watch: Winter Pills

Hometown: Northampton, Mass.
Members [l-r]: Flora Reed
(harmony vocals); Philip Price (lead vocals, acoustic guitar); Dennis Crommett (electric guitar, background vocals); Dave Hower (drums, percussion, background vocals)
Fun fact: The members of Winterpills are movie buffs who debate films for hours over glasses of wine. Price has worked in a hip video store and once sold a screenplay to Star Trek: The Next Generation for an episode that never aired.
Why they’re worth watching: Jim Olsen, the Signature Sounds president, who helped launch the careers of Josh Ritter, Lori McKenna and Erin McKeown, created a new imprint, Soft Alarm, to house Winterpills.
For fans of: Elliott Smith, Simon & Garfunkel, Iron & Wine, Ida

Philip Price has tried writing when he’s happy. He just doesn’t like the results. It was grinding through tough times that brought out the beautifully melancholic songs on Winterpills’ self-titled debut—songs about fractured relationships, dissolving families, painkillers and death.

“I’m a total classic Werner Herzogian cliché of the artist creat[ing] from pain” says Price, Winterpills lead vocalist and songwriter. “I think the struggle to write a good, sad song is a lifelong one. The best songs are sad because music, pop music, by nature, is a cathartic, immediate form, and nobody wants to purge themselves of happiness.”

You could try to trace Price’s lyrics to the death of his father, to whom he dedicates the album, or to specific broken accords. But Price warns against that because he tends to combine emotional elements in his songs, creating composite sketches.

The tight-knit band, which recorded the album in vocalist Flora Reed’s kitchen, brings some brilliance to the palette. Reed’s airy vocal harmonies levitate. Dennis Crommett’s minimalist guitar parts subtly command your attention, and Dave Hower’s inventive drumming adds tension.

“I guess I wanted the band to be dull-gray, sepia-toned,” Price says. “But we couldn’t stop all these new colors from coming in, so I just let them and that’s what the band is now.”