After extensive airplay from Steve Lamacq on his 6music show and a set at the Kendal Calling festival, The Wind Up Birds return with a new EP which will be available digitally and a strictly limited edition vinyl.
There’s a definite lyrical skill at work here. The Yorkshire band paint vivid pictures of small Northern towns with enough detail to captivate even the most casual listener, in my book it’s always a joy to hear people sing about “war memorials” and “market halls”. However unlike the early work of Brett Anderson or Morrissey, these details never transcend into anything more than observations. The typically British glamour some of our greatest lyricists have found in the mundane is absent here. Instead all the characters in The Wind Up Birds’ songs are trapped in their surroundings.
Opener Good Shop Shuts contains the wonderful image of a quiet town that “cars just drive straight through”. Later we find a call centre worker contemplating his mis-spent youth before suffocating amongst the barrage of motivational managerial talk (“the slogans on the wall, the slogans on the wall”). There is no sense Springsteen-esque hope or even wry Arctic Monkeys humour: we are continually hit over the head with how rubbish life is. Some Slum Clearances offers an attack on the political system but without an articulate or intelligent pay off (just open the lyric booklet for Generation Terrorists for an example of what’s missing here), it’s the equivalent of listening to the drunk at closing time berating the state of the country about 10 minutes before he announces ‘they should bring back hanging’.
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As if to highlight the force of the lyrical content, vocalist Paul Ackroyd doesn’t so much carry a tune but physically assaults it. It’s a style similar to the localised delivery of The Streets, however the way Ackroyd covers every line with disgust and bile makes listening to The Wind-Up Birds feel like you’re being berated. As a result there a very few moments of melodic interest, the songs feel very linear and when choruses appear, instead of an emotional release they seem like the repetitions of a boozy 3am conversation where no matter how hard you try you just can’t get off a topic.
Musically it’s reminiscent of the hundreds of average bands who appeared after The Libertines tried to reinvigorate British music. Unfortunately they have also found themselves a bass player who seems to have grown up listening to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. The growling menace of Some Slum Clearances offers a captivating back-drop for Ackroyd’s ranting but on the whole the attempted punky spikiness just reminds you that this has all been done so much better before.
The Wind-Up Birds on Myspace
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