Hence why a bunch of the songs gallop with that panicky blast of lyricism, caught up somewhere in between amphetamine and daydream, feeling like the inspired fire of a poet with badges on his blazer and some surreal, epiphanic dictum etched into the upside of his palm. Vocalist Kroryd is clearly a writer that physically can’t find a way to get the pen to the paper quick enough to expel all that keeps the mind a ticking device, a subconscious stowaway in the night. Waiting to be fed, it is a forceful opener catchier than a common cold ever more due to its geeky, gorgeous vocoder vocal, counterpointing the astute vignettes either circling or being circled by, the entire dramatic parade. Brimming with mind-blinding tales of being filled up and filled in, to the point where being filled (the tune uses Netflix binge culture as its desired target, and succeeds in stabbing it directly in the retina with a feathered, brass dart) bemoaning the absence of answers devoid despite the onslaught of questions that lay lonely, naked and starving before them. With every twist of the melodic keyboards in eyeliner applied by Mat Forrest (who also plays the guitar) and every lunge of the urgent, ugly bass by Ben Dawson driving things through bigger things, it’s a song concurrently commanding and condemning in equal measure. All caustic, indie complexities and baffling, dark disco magic Russian coldwave cobwebs settling atop the whole charging, Northern art riot. Mark Sturdy ©Į-Shaped Stories slams its foot firmly into the pedal that creates a Canopysaurus out of a Citroen. On this album, you can really get a feel for why if one was to blink whilst the Wind-Up Birds are either being wound up or winding down and you might just miss the pounding forever. On this album, you can really get to grips with why they’ve been the protagonist operating either on the most cult of cult levels that no underground is ever underground enough. Yard Act have been admirers of the band as not so much musical influencers observed from afar, but inspired to weave together a similar strand of political lyricism, wildly imaginative character profiles and the horrific strip they are strapped to whereby the drab is so drab, it almost becomes extraordinarily uncanny, unnervingly raw. The fans, either hypothetical or real people with a record collection that could align itself to the noise The Wind-Up Birds create could well be anything from REM, Sugarcubes, Flatmates, Arab Strap or Au Pairs.īut when talking about a group that has been active for as long as the new heroes, take Yard Act for example, the art in question is always going to be so much greater than just the sum of its sonic parts but really strives to analyse the evil between the teeth, to articulate as best as one can the eerie in the every day by each brushstroke and analytical highbeam sourced at this very Northern group.

You’d be completely correct and unable not to be totally disproven by thinking the group sounds like what their special slice of art is rumoured to be ‘for fans of’. Their recent set of songs since 2020’s full-length album Summer Haunts, E-Shaped Stories is the new release from Leeds’ The Wind-Up Birds.

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