Living Hour - Internal Drone Infinity
Paper Bag Records
Released on October 17th, 2025
Internal Drone Infinity, from beloved Winnipeg shoegaze band Living Hour, is a thoughtfully crafted and deeply moving album, from the electronic fake-out opening of “Stainless Steel Dream” to the folky equanimity of “Things Will Remain.” By turns plaintive, tender, and playful, the album engages with the passing of time, the processes of healing, and the beauty preserved in the particularities of everyday life.
“Stainless Steel Dream” settles, after its frantic intro, into the dreamy, guitar-centred indie rock that characterizes most of the album (like a bandmate blowing a puff of smoke, putting on an EDM playlist, and then going “just kidding!” before anyone can get mad). Even in its under-two-minute runtime, the track demonstrates singer-lyricist Sam Sarty’s great skill for zooming in to an experiential micro scale, living briefly in the “space between the beeps when the oven’s pre-heated,” or the “rhythm of the stairs spaced out by landings.”
The album is built from these small details, finding deeper meaning in the minutiae of a time and place as often as it grapples with longing, stagnation, and the listlessness of nostalgia. “Waiter” combines the transcendent mopiness of Pedro the Lion with the rich, fuzzed out guitars of Pavement, as Sarty requests, “Tell me where you think I oughta be, with this one body and all its thinking.” The theme of overthinking arises in more than one tune, as does the feeling of stasis expressed in lines like “Cut my hair and then it grows right back.”
The band tastefully tackles both the personal and political; in “Best I Did It” Sarty’s voice shifts from contemplative sadgirl murmur to heartfelt keen as she ruminates on death and redemption, while “Firetrap,” a psychedelic diversion with twisty guitar parts and layered vocals, captures the vicarious trauma accrued through being unavoidably aware of the wider world: “It’s a firetrap, everybody wants to be a diplomat. I’m not in danger but I wanna run away from here.”
The lyrics of “Texting” oscillate between intimate introspection and stream-of-consciousness poetry, as its detached list-making—“Familiar Lysol smell of a scrubbed business, take my money and mean it, high vis biker in an old halloween mask, shoulder to shoulder, resting SUVs”—gives way to “At 29 I feel sick, but I’m just getting started my medicine.” In a press release accompanying the single, Sarty describes being “inspired by the process of trying to explain Winnipeg to someone over text … I wanted the lyrics to express this constant destruction and rebuilding of a place. It’s hard to explain Winnipeg. I love that I’m from here, it feels like a secret power that’s deeper than any body of water.”
The secret magic of Living Hour’s (and my) home city shines through, fragmented like haphazard photographs taken while experimenting with a new camera. We encounter a “sunwashed plastic garbage bin, blue now from the cornflower sun;” a “petition on a rusted lamp;” the enigmatic imagery “From sod to seed, Loveday Mushroom.” (Ah yes, haven’t all Winnipeggers at some point fallen for someone who lived near the Loveday farm, and are now thrown into bittersweet reminiscences by a certain fecal scent wafting in the air?)
Things turn sadder and sleepier with “Little Kid,” which is confessional and emotionally raw in the vein of Mitski or Big Thief, and “Half Can,” whose sparse lyrics hit harder for their minimalism: “Heard it on the empty radio, felt it on the outside wall of your show, had another question but you already know, half a can inside my hand, I watch it go.”
Internal Drone Infinity ends with the starkly gorgeous “Things Will Remain.” A wistful repeating chorus of “Things will remain and I will not, desperate collage of ice blocks pushing up against some rocks” invites comparison to the warmly tragic poetry in fellow Winnipegger John K. Samson’s Winter Wheat, managing to be comforting and poignant at once. The song evokes a sense of impermanence, of a shift in perspective both mournful and freeing.
Sarty accepts the ephemerality of her surroundings, musing, “Almost didn’t take a photo, but I’m happy that I did, cause it melted all around me when I crossed across the bridge.” Fortunately, this album has far more staying power than a spring melt, and can be reexperienced and appreciated for all its small moments of wonder.
