Northampton, Mass.
Rough Love

Philip Price was two years into a solo acoustic career when he formed a band “a little bit by accident.” That quintet, Winterpills, has now been together for over a decade, and their seventh album, Love Songs, was released in March. “There had been a lot of breakups, my dad had just died. It was kind of a rough time for a lot of the individuals who eventually made up the band,” Price says of Winterpills’ formation. “We kind of discovered that we had this whole other sound going on
that was not at all like what I was doing by myself.” The five members (Price is married to keyboardist/singer Flora Reed) are based in the Northampton, Mass., area and Price says their rural environment informs the expansive feel of their songs, noting that music inevitably ends up sounding like the “natural world in which it’s created.” For Love Songs, Winterpills entered a professional studio for the first time to work with an outside producer, Justin Pizzoferrato (Dinosaur Jr., Thurston Moore). “He brought out whatever sonic heaviness we’d been doing in our live shows for a while,” Price says. As for Winterpills’ longevity, Price notes, “We’ve been so close to each other during so many personal ups and downs. It’s pretty hard to not be friends.”