{"id":2831,"date":"2014-05-19T12:30:52","date_gmt":"2014-05-19T16:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nowthissound.com\/ntsib\/?p=2831"},"modified":"2015-05-29T18:08:51","modified_gmt":"2015-05-29T22:08:51","slug":"wind-birds-poor-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nowthissound.com\/ntsib\/2014\/05\/19\/wind-birds-poor-music\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wind-up Birds, Poor Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Poor<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I retired from NTSIB, I threatened to return with the release of the next album from the Wind-up Birds, the Leeds four-piece whose first full-length album, The Land<\/em><\/a>, was dropped into my lap in 2012<\/a> and reminded me of why I started this blog in the first place. Well, Poor Music<\/em><\/a>, which comes out on May 27th, gives me 17 tracks worth of fantastic reasons to make good on my threat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They killed off all our favourite TV characters
\nSo we became TV characters
\nWe started off subtly by giving stupid answers on quiz shows
\nBut then, we just took the whole thing over<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And the musicians tried to keep selling us their past
\nSo we trapped them and beamed them up
\nInto an infinite loop of knowing references
\nAnd made them perform their best album, in order, for ever<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Opening with the power drill riff of “There Will Be No Departures from This Stand”, Poor Music<\/em> asserts that, no, the Wind-up Birds are not going to start taking it easy on you now. Like The Land<\/em>‘s opener, “Good Shop Shuts”, “There Will Be No Departures […]” calls us all to examine ourselves and our actions, and we can only nod in resignation as Kroyd points out all-too-astutely that “…we agreed that compassion was just one of life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s luxuries.”<\/p>\n

But Poor Music<\/em> reads less like a lesson book and more like a short story collection full of uncomfortable, and sometimes disturbingly familiar, situations, ranging in scope from global to personal – stories populated with characters, wandering in and out of scenes, who are sometimes allegorical, sometimes representational, sometimes biographical, and the lines blur between them. In “Addis Ababa”, the story of a young child’s sartorial mishap on a school field trip calls into question not only the real aim of the sometimes bizarre practices of educators but also the act of conforming that we seem to be called on to do from birth until death. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n