The Hair of the Dog Award for Most Successful Hangover Cure

Winchester Warm
Sky One Room
(Self-released; 2010)

The Walkmen and the Hold Steady have spent the better part of a decade establishing their reputations as the world’s preeminent purveyors of Intelligent Drinking Music (the lesser-known, surlier IDM). And indeed if you find yourself on a night bus home armed with nothing more than earbuds and a flask of bourbon, there really is no better soundtrack than the classic Bows + Arrows (2004) / Separation Sunday (2005) double-bill. The catch, of course, is that you must face the morning after, though happily not alone: there exists a soothing inversion of IDM, a kind of aural antidote for the hangover’s grueling beatdown. This year the cure came in the form of Winchester Warm’s Sky One Room, an album of austere, deeply felt folk rock that’s gotten me through more head-splitting weekday hangovers than I’d care to admit. I don’t fully comprehend this record’s almost mystical healing properties but I will certainly attest to their potency—even wallowing in the depths of the most blistering hangover imaginable, Sky One Room somehow manages to pierce a headache’s seemingly insurmountable defenses and greatly assuage.

Download this album, finish that bottle of Jameson, and thank me later: winchesterwarm.bandcamp.com