The Wind-Up Birds
Meet Me At The Depot b/w Popman
Sturdy Records

"Meet Me At The Depot" and "Popman" make the new (their third) single by Leeds combo The Wind-Up Birds, named after a novel ('The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle') by Haruki Murakami. The quartet write songs: "...about car parks, and songs about pubs, and songs about work, and songs about escape", according to their label. In fact they write very cool songs.

The Wind-Up Birds are post-punksters with a poppy sound, neat riffs and cunning lyrics. "Meet Me At The Depot" is more a classic, slack song - imagine TV Personalities meets Beatnik Filmstars conducted by Mark E. Smith, while "Popman" is a more speedy tune, like the Stranglers bursting into Buzzcocks' rehearsal room. Classic, spirited, joyful post-punk is the key-word here, right. Great melodies, good stamina. We'd better watch out for a full album! Spread the word about The Wind-Up Birds.

"Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things." (H. Murakami)

Copyright © 2011 Håvard Oppøyen