Winter Aid Announces 'The Wisp Sings' 10th Anniversary Edition

Winter Aid, aka Irish songwriter Shane Culloty, has announced the 10th anniversary edition of this debut EP, The Wisp Sings, to be released November 10, fully remastered for its first time pressing on vinyl via Bluestack Records, along with an expanded 13 track digital edition.

In addition, Winter Aid has shared the previously unreleased track, “Lazy Beds,” a wistful look at where Culloty grew up in Co. Kerry, available via all digital platforms. Pre-order vinyl edition of The Wisp Sings. Pre-save digital edition. 

The Wisp Sings EP is anchored by its title-track single; a song whose sustainability and longevity is both a testament to its quality and ability to connect with people worldwide, and a source of surprise to its creator. Since its release in 2013, the track has garnered well over 300 million streams across all platforms, working its way onto daytime television segments, into documentaries on BBC and RTE, dramas on HBO and Prime, and soundtracking an ad that ran during the 2022 Oscars broadcast. 

Discussing the anniversary, and returning to where it all musically began for Culloty, he states: "For me the song sings with abundant happiness, but the sad tones ring truer for most,” notes Culloty. "I've received more emails, messages and comments than I can recall, some of them thanking me for the song, and some sharing stories of desperate emotional wreckage.

During the pandemic it became clear that there were countless people finding something soothing in the song, and clinging to it in the weird motionless and seasick days of lockdown. The messages became more urgent, the play-counts pointed higher, and suddenly the song was a kind of shorthand on TikTok for emotion: videos of discovered affairs, eating disorder support groups, and struggles with anxiety all featured my voice overlaid. By the time of the 2020 presidential election, the Biden campaign had used the song for a clip of the then-candidate calling his grandkids.

Now, in 2023, the song feels both unalterably mine and yet untethered; occasionally out of sight, in the orbit of others. It's been cheekily recreated by global corporations for homespun phone ads, borrowed by young songwriters angling for virality, and ripped off repeatedly by beatmakers and spammers alike. This anniversary rerelease is a good way to get close to 'The Wisp Sings' again, to do my best to appreciate what it's become. It's been a joy to revisit the song and remember how it felt to write it, remember that at one point it had never been heard outside our cosy apartment.”

The release of The Wisp Sings 10th anniversary edition, marks a return for Winter Aid, after uprooting from Ireland with his wife, for new opportunities in San Francisco, just in time for a pandemic lockdown. The release provided Culloty to return to complete some older material that had been left in various states of almost finished, along with heading into a studio to remaster the original tracks.

One of the tracks that will be new to most is “Lazy Beds.” Of its genesis and journey, Culloty notes, “A few days after the release of the original ‘The Wisp Sings' EP, I was asked by a small Belgian label to take part in an unusual project: write a pair of songs and re-record them 15 times for a run of 15 vinyl, each pre-ordered by a different customer. Both songs came over the course of a weekend spent thinking about the small Kerry farm where I was raised, and the first and better of the two was ‘Lazy Beds'.

‘Lazy Beds' was a hard song to pin down - every time I played it it felt like I was playing two songs at the same time, like it was a quiet song that wanted to be loud. For the Belgian label I recorded solo acoustic versions at home, thanking each customer by name before each recording - but after playing the song 15 times over a week or so, I felt more confused by it than ever.

Years went by with ‘Lazy Beds' hanging around. Every few months a new fan stumbled upon the song on Bandcamp and sent me a message asking for it to be released more widely. It never seemed ready to fit on the next releases, and I found myself constantly fiddling with alternate mixes, vocal effects, and huge rearranged choruses - even a danceable version with steel pan drums.

Finally, this year I took the song with me to the Middle Ridge Studio run by my friend Cian in Parkfield, California, where I cut it down from 5 minutes to 3 and a half. I played it in one take on one guitar and it suddenly sounded finished - like it had been waiting for me in the middle of California all along.”

Revisiting The Wisp Sings and celebrating everything that has happened with it over the past decade is the closing of one chapter for Culloty, and the opening of another. In the weeks and months ahead, plans are in the works to release a steady stream of new Winter Aid material, including a long-awaited sophomore full-length album, in the spring of 2024. More news coming soon.

Photo Credit: Andy Omvik

To post a comment, you must register and login.