We Are Winter’s Blue and Radiant Children is Mathieu Ball (Big|Brave) and Efrim Manuel Menuck (Thee Silver Mt Zion, Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and Jonathan Downs (Ada) and Patch (Ada). On No More Apocalypse Father they present six modal lullabies drenched in seared distortion, slathered across striding electronic pulses. Ball and Menuck began creating music in and for the bleakest moments of Montréal winters: “We’re honouring that idea of winter, when you come inside and your house is warm, a place that only exists because of how cold it is outside,” says Menuck. They later recruited Downs and Patch to flesh out their initial ideas. No More Apocalypse Father is an album about witnessing bleakness from a place of safety. Carrying newfound descriptive depth, thanks to the quartet’s open-ended songs freeing him from writing in meter, Menuck likens his lyrics to photorealism. On opener ‘Rats and Roses’ he sings of an unnamed city struck by an unknown cataclysm, but the details are local: specifically, his neighbors inadvertently poisoning birds when tackling a rat infestation. It’s backed by blown out synths and guitars reaching a soaring crescendo. “Seeing things from a distance and not being able to intervene happens a lot on the record,” Menuck explains. “If you’re a feeling and thinking person, that’s just part of the human condition. We watch horror unfolding from afar, unable to do anything concrete to change it.” For fans of Alexander Tucker, Nate Young, Microphones, Silver Mt. Zion, Big|Brave, Mat Ball, Suicide.