Get all 16 The Wind-up Birds releases available on Bandcamp and save 30%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of "Pop.Thinking", Bar Sadness (with added RacketBall), Summer Haunts, Desire Paths, The Right, Poor Music, The Gristle, Acting Thick for Money (volume 2), and 8 more.
1. |
E-shaped Stories
03:49
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It’s goddam gut-wrenching
It’s heartbreaking
And I’m parachuted in
There’s all these sirens braying
Bullets spraying
When you give me all there sins
You’ve got me thinking
“How did they get themselves into this and
How will they get themselves out of this?”
Is this exhilarating?
Yeah but the next thing
It’s only ever seven seconds from my mind
So don’t think me right unkind
But you’re gonna have to try and do loads better than this
Or else how do you think you’ll keep me trapped
Stuck in the middle of this?
You’ll have to ramp up the thrills and the e-shaped stories
Give me cyclone twists and the grimmest histories
Give me shocks, a buzz, and trickster dances
I have questions but there are no answers
Tighten the grip of your e-shaped stories
Promise to thrill me, grill me, never to bore me
Give me flashbacks, strobe-light trances
I have questions but there are no answers
Glitchy news
Music gloss
Slow down footage
Now rush
Jump narrative streams
I’m finally thrilled
I think this means that I care
I don’t care
Somethings glowing over there
For one single hour you gave me a buzz
Is that enough?
Ramp up the thrills and the e-shaped stories
Give me cyclone twists and the grimmest histories
Give me shocks, a buzz, trickster dances
I have questions, there are no answers
Tighten the grips of your e-shaped stories
Promise to thrill me, kill me, never to bore me
Give me flashbacks, strobe-light trances
I have questions but there are no answers
You fill us up
You fill us in
But quick, let’s check out the beginning
I want to know how this all got started
If there’s a harsh back story it might feel cathartic
You, you filled us up
You filled us in
We looked where you pointed
We felt these feelings
Is there one single action that I can take
When it’s a magic trick
When it’s birthday cake?
I hope by the end that you fill in all the blanks
I’ll be so happy but I won’t say thanks
In the silence afterwards I will find more blanks
I’ll be unhappy but I’ll just say thanks
Are the victims still the victims
When we are thrilled and we are filled
And we are filled and we are thrilled?
And we are…
You fill us up and you fill us in
You fill us up and you fill us in
You fill us up and you fill us in
You fill us up and you fill us in
I am full, full, full but then the next one starts
And here is the hook for our breaking hearts
Which are breaking for the dead or for the talking heads
Or are they breaking for ourselves?
You’ll have to ramp up the thrills and the e-shaped stories
Give me cyclone twists and the grimmest histories
Give me shocks, a buzz, trickster dances
I have questions but there are no answers
Tighten the grip of your e-shaped stories
Promise to thrill me, never to bore me
Give me your flashbacks and strobe-light trances
I have questions
There are no answers
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2. |
Song Boxes
03:04
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We got abandoned in this land with it’s haunting carols and
All it’s henchman hanging around the bright red barrels
There are rare days when we feel okay but
You know they don’t last long
Barely remembered loved ones
Still trying to hold their hands
Can you picture that message we tramped into the sand?
These are the last few moments
There’s a timer running down
You know it won’t last long
(Can you hear us coming out of your song boxes?
We’ll try to make it quick so it won’t be too obnoxious)
We are wretched, dead all ready, this early in a song
Can’t stop this overwhelming mood pulling us along
I scrambled for the reeds as I rushed down the banks
I pretty much gave in
I pretty much sank
There was no redemption
Zero restoration
A dead world
Nothing will grow again
I see no good and I could see no love
These are the things that I’m so afraid of
We keep scrubbing but it’s never enough
This cloth just gets filthy and the dirt never comes off
There are rare days when we don’t feel this grey
Let’s pray it doesn’t last long
PAUL, your eyes look tired, I would recommend bed
If you’d ever check your inbox but my message is unread
Yeah, it’s a rare day when I do my admin and
I know it won’t last long
We’re so far in this now but stop this is wrong
Yeah, you can change your mind half way through a song
One last chance
Let’s turn this around
In this tragic land make a positive sound
Make redemption
A little restoration
This dead world might grow again and
It’ll be about good
It’ll be about love
All the things we are so afraid of
For God’s sake drag us out with you
By the shoulders through the buffer zone
We might be frozen and scared but
Now at least we are not alone
I’ve managed to find some bolt-cutters and
I know you’ve got snippers for the wire
We’ve got each other now
For definite and
We’ve got our fire
So here is BEN on his bass with a smile on his face
Cause of OLI’s supple drumming telling you to come in and
Get warm by the fire with MAT’s sweet guitar
This off-key singing let’s you know that you are winning
Here is redemption and restoration
A dead world but we are growing again and
Here is good and here is love and
We are not afraid anymore and
We are not afraid anymore and
We are not afraid anymore
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3. |
Margarine
02:39
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Margarine
Watch us
As we synchronise our watches
And watch our idiosyncrasies
We idolise security
More security
We’ll secure ourselves the peerages
Then peer down the cleavages
As we cleave in two our promises
What promises?
It’s always prom night in our offices
We are officially stiff-lipped
As we worship some old dead men
All those dead men
They are creeping up behind you
We’re creeping up beside you
Peripheral
Watch out
We’re creeping up behind you
We’re creeping up beside you
Peripheral
Watch out
We love to hate and break things
We break into escape rooms
Scapegoat the minorities
Miners and their progenies
Protect our generation
We love rationing and ploughman’s
Let’s plough the void inside us
We only side with the victorious
We are curious about nothing
Think only of our taxes
So tactless and vindictive
Distinguished by our hatred
We’re creeping up behind you
We’re creeping up beside you
Peripheral
Watch out
We’re creeping up behind you
We’re creeping up beside you
Peripheral
Watch out
And if we can make ourselves the victims
We can victimise the margins
And then margarine the ladders
For the ones who come behind us
And if we can make ourselves the victims
We can victimise the margins
And then margarine the ladders
We only tolerate our own deviancy
And if we deviate from the truth sometimes
These times cry out for safety
So save this date in your diary
And diarise the anniversary
Of the death of every refugee
We’ve refused entry and saved our public from
And if our public schools and networks
Net us the workers’ savings
We are only here to save them
From themselves
They can’t be trusted
Trust us
This place is busted
We’re creeping up behind you
We’re creeping up beside you
Peripheral
Watch out
We’re creeping up behind you
We’re creeping up beside you
Peripheral
Watch out
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4. |
The Brazilian Sgt Pepper
03:35
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We, we know how to get ourselves low but
We also know how to let ourselves go and
We know enough to keep our backs away from the windows and
Now our knees say ‘Hey!’ and our knees they give way
It’s okay, we can just play the cynic at the minor injuries clinic and
If there’s a dust round our house or a crust round our mouths
We’ll just say ‘Hold it, you may have oversold it’
This is the Brazilian Sgt Pepper and it always disappoints
But we’ll probably sing these songs forever
Sing them all together and we won’t harmonise ever
Just sing the same songs forever
Unbalanced dancing in the street
Can still make a heart miss a beat
Let’s sing these songs together
Forever
We said ‘Pour out some drinks, give us the strong ones’
Then you can really watch us cut a swathe
With only our blue/grey resumes
And see there, two petitions side-by-side
One full of hate
One full of lies
We sign them both like it’s a joke and say
‘They probably cancelled each other out anyway’
So what if all us swans are tagged
Still our nature fights back
We are Gods
We are slags and
Now the Brazilian Sgt Pepper
It starts to sound okay
So we sing these songs forever
Sing them all together and we can’t harmonise ever
Just sing the same songs forever
Unbalanced dancing in the street
Can still make a heart miss a beat
Let’s sing love songs together
Forever
Then finally I figured it out
A way to be my own backing singer
They locked the studio doors but it’s okay
I found a way to sneak back in
I thought that if I could hide myself away
Back here in this last tune
Then maybe somehow I could reach you
I might be stuck here forever at this very last hurdle
Where bands and their dreams come to curdle
Man, why does everything just feel so final?
We might have to put this out on Horlicks-coloured vinyl
Or maybe I’m not like those other singers and
This is supposed to slip right through my fingers
The funeral song too sad to sing
The hollowness that follows your glorious win
The clever drone shot that keeps zooming out
Filling the screen with only more doubt and
Will the only pleasure left in this place
Be the satisfying snap of my glasses case?
And here amongst our narrow choices
Always this joyless inner-voice says
‘I don’t know but maybe you ought to
Keep your boat a bit nearer the water’
But then someone would probably just nick it
Or a shore-bound drunk would find a way to be sick in it
And in this self-sabotage song (our usual trope)
I can’t decide if this a hymn of hope
Or is it two people under pitch-black covers?
Reaching for, but always missing each other
I’ll try to sneak back out of this track the way that I came in
Back through the bits about love and the bits about sin and
Before the band or ROSS have even saw us
I’ll just prise my way out through the gaps in the chorus and
I imagine on the track behind me flowers won’t grow but
Part of my heart is telling me
‘No, there might be a whole wide world under see-through covers
Reaching out and finally finding each other’
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The Wind-up Birds Leeds
New EP - "Pop. Thinking" is out now.
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