Album Review: Windings, Be Honest And Fear Not

Following on from their debut album I Am Not the Crow, in which Windings delivered an octet of killer post-punk anthems, the Limerick band are back with another boundary-pushing effort.

“When it comes to meeting new friends/ Try not to think of it as making up numbers for your funeral,” sings Steve Ryan on album opener ‘Ambivalence Blues’. It’s a hilariously morbid note on which to commence a record made up of frank and blunt lyrics (Be Honest and Fear Not seems to be the advice the band gave themselves as these songs were penned). But with honesty comes soul-excavating, and as the album progresses, we’re taken on a wonderful journey through the collective psyche of these musicians. Each carefully chosen and brilliantly executed instrumental soundscape complements the lyrical themes. ‘You’re Dead’ has a terrifying, hypnotic riff, which draws us into the darkness of the verses; it’s a thoughtful, thought-provoking descent into the feeling of despair when “pleasure becomes pain”.

The album is also punctuated by two shorter, heavier punk songs, ‘Boring’ and ‘On the Passing of Sega’. Sticking with bluntness as their theme (‘Boring’ leads with the line “I tried to throw a plastic bottle at the singer of The Frames”), these two songs showcase the band’s musical dexterity. But you feel like, located as they are in the midst of the longer, more intense musical passages, they take away slightly from the album’s cohesiveness. It’s a minor grievance on a really impressive return from one of Ireland’s most innovative bands.