'Midwinter Swimmers' is a music album for nature lovers

Midwinter Swimmers

The Innocence Mission (Bella Union, 2024)

Sometimes an album comes along so seemingly unconcerned with popularity and trends that it startles with its artistic sincerity. Midwinter Swimmers is just such an album. Like a stroll through a gallery where each painting enriches the others, the effect of these songs is immersive: They both speak of something deeper and transport us elsewhere.

The Innocence Mission formed in 1986 and through time has distilled into the keen vision of Karen Peris (singer, songwriter, musician); her husband, Don Peris (guitar, drums); and Mike Bitts (bass). With a love of things both modern and traditional, their sound is equally at home with classical guitar and slow-building strings as with minimal percussion and electronic keyboards. Theirs is a sound longtime music lovers can appreciate that’s nevertheless capable of making a younger generation pause and consider.

Never ostentatious yet capable of setting a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins to song, their music lingers in the spirituality of the everyday. Observing birds and the colors of the day; saving thoughts and questions for an absent, intimate friend; or pondering the passage of time while cherishing a stroll home from the grocery store with someone close are all carefully set to melodies nostalgic yet immediate.

In the superlative “Sisters and Brothers,” Peris perceives the seemingly harmonious song of all things: birds perched on branches, rows of buildings, sisters and brothers, all uniting with her own voice in a hymn of creation—yet with tinges of sadness bringing her to unexplained tears. Such a blend of specificity, ambiguity, and emotion lends itself to meaningful appropriation by its listeners. It’s an album for anyone thankful for God’s grace, the wonder of nature, community, human companionship, children, and so much more.