‘Be Honest and Fear Not’ follows the band’s Choice Prize nominated ‘I Am Not the Crow’ from 2012. As with the previous album the band remains fearless in letting the songs take as long as they need to make their point. The seven and a half minute epic ‘Ambivalence Blues’ kicks off the album and sets the tone. It is lyrically a defiant statement of intent and is another one of the Windings’ finest pieces.
See us kneeling on your filthy stage
Crying out on your radio stations
We just wanted to have the chance
To put a little noise in the air
Just some noise to show that we’re there
Frontman Stephen Ryan stated in a previous interview with Limerick Post that his work tutoring songwriters with Music Generation and playing with Rusangano Family had inspired him to “walk the walk” when it came to using lyrical sincerity and honesty in the writing for ‘Be Honest and Fear Not’. As good as his word, there is vivid lyrical imagery throughout this record, lines that will stay in your mind long after the music fades out.
And if you think respect is overrated
Maybe that’s because you just weren’t
meant to get it
And when it comes to meeting new friends
Try not to think of it as making up
numbers for your funeral
The musicianship and creativity in the band is at its very best on ‘Be Honest and Fear Not’. A tightly wound unit, the players twist and turn through light and shade, always playing for the songs, masters of their domain with nothing to prove to anybody.
Windings gleefully confound expectations, sequencing tracks that are polar opposite in approach. The listener is pulled from the wonky funk of ‘I’m Alarmed’ to the desolate ‘Stray Dogs and onto the dream pop of ‘A Better Place’ finishing on the sweet heartbreak of album closer ‘Late Praise’. Track two ‘Boring’ is played with raging GAMAK energy and kicks off with a laugh out loud couplet from Ryan that will have Glen Hansard ducking for cover.
I tried to throw a plastic bottle at the
singer of The Frames
I was going through a hard time,
thought he might’ve been to blame
‘Be Honest and Fear Not’ marks another watershed moment in the ongoing story of some of Limerick’s most audacious artists.
Windings go on tour this week playing DeBarra’s, Clonakilty Oct 14; Coughlan’s, Cork Oct 15 and Dolan’s in Limerick on Saturday October 22.
