These New Puritans – Crooked Wing – Album Review
by Killian Laher

These New Puritans’ Jack and George Barnett often leave it five or six years between releases, but their albums seldom bear any resemblance to anyone else’s work.  They have returned with what is best described as a fairly out there collection, the album starting and ending with a young child singing over a church organ.  The first track proper, Bells, is a long seven-minute track full of twinkling keyboards and yes, bells, and Jack Barnett singing over heavenly voices.  This bliss is shattered by the dark rumblings and heavy drums of A Season In Hell, aptly titled, sounding like a soundtrack to hell.

The most conventional track is probably the gentle ballad Industrial Love Song.  It features a vocal cameo from Caroline Polachek, and turns out to be a love song from the point of view of two cranes!

“’Industrial Love Song’ is a duet between two cranes on a building site,” explains Jack Barnett. “Caroline sings the part of one crane, I sing the other; they can’t touch (their movements are controlled by the operator), but when the sun rises they hope that their shadows will cross. I like how the title George came up with misdirects expectations – it’s not that kind of industrial.”

After this I’m Already Here is a relatively quiet piano piece with a little woodwind.  This chilled-out atmosphere is completely shattered by the growling Wild Fields, a dark, brooding track with slamming drums and droning keyboards.  Later, we get the spooked-out organ ballad The Old World, and the majestically brooding title track.  The latter track is quite the epic, two melodies in one underpinned by funereal organ.  Goodnight features almost zen-like keyboards and brass before the choirboy-led final track.

What sounds cold and at times absolutely bonkers initially, gradually begins to make sense on repeated listening.  But it’s all over the place, and I suspect it will take months to really connect.  It’s definitely one of the more unusual albums of the year

Bells