Midwinter Swimmers [CD]

The first album from The Innocence Mission in five years, Midwinter Swimmers sounds immediately like an old friend. At the same time it feels like a new kind of adventure for the beloved Pennsylvania band of high school friends Karen Peris, Don Peris, and Mike Bitts, having both an expansive, cinematic quality and a lo fi, strange beauty of a newly discovered vintage folk pop album. Early reviews have called Midwinter Swimmers a truly special album, linking it especially with Befriended, the band's classic LP from 2003. Songwriter Karen Peris looks closely at every day moments as miraculous worlds of their own, with a particular sense of place and detail, as a way of joining in a conversation with other people about universal experiences of change and loss, and of love, hope and gratitude.