These New Puritans
Crooked Wing
DOMINO
Twin brothers George and Jack Barnett treat each record they create together like a tall stained glass window in a church, reflecting genres and styles with new and inspiring light sources. Their fifth album as These New Puritans, Crooked Wing, continues in the storied tradition of former English post-rock bands such as Talk Talk, Coil, and Wild Beasts, with exquisite production from Jack and longtime collaborator and Bark Psychosis pioneer Graham Sutton building off the sounds of 2019’s Inside the Rose and 2013’s Field of Reeds, while holding on to some of the punk-rock energy of their early albums.
The brothers still manage to surprise listeners on their first record in six years, most starkly by closing the new song suite with a boy soprano (on “Waiting” and “Return”). The vocals were recorded in a remote church in their hometown of Essex, with the interplay of organ and voice throughout this album making for a rather unique and haunting submission within TNP’s discography. “Bells” and “I’m Already Here” are the sounds of rain falling outside the church, where a populace and all their worries butt up against bustling streets and open fields. “The Old World” is one of These New Puritans’ most beautiful songs, its organ a yearning heart tug over the growls heard elsewhere on the record. Afterward, the brooding and ascendant title track takes the organ skyward. When the Barnetts decide to use an instrument, they get the full mileage out of it.
For the brothers, the texture in between the notes is often fully in mind. The pounding drums of “Industrial Love Song”—featuring guest vocals from Caroline Polachek—and “I’m Already Here” are aerosolized productions, with the instruments wafting in and out like frankincense and myrrh above candlelight. Some moments on the album snarl and others purr, but they all interlace. The brothers and their collaborators sound like they’re thumping on pipe organs inside the bowels of a factory floor on “A Season in Hell” and “Crooked Wing,” while the use of distorted voice, vibraphone, and trumpet on “Goodnight” coalesce for a solemn and frightening lullaby that turns into a death march to the sea. Chris Laurence’s upright bass is the constant heartbeat on the recording, as it also is on “Industrial Love Song” and the title track.
Crooked Wing is a document of the modern world wrestling for coexistence with the old world. The Barnett brothers’ acute attention to detail can be heard everywhere on this record. Songs about underground exploration and paying the ferryman can sit alongside a love song about two cranes at a building site and cartoon characters traversing wastelands. Crooked Wing’s heart is human, though. Its instruments yearn for space outside of the growl and grind of machine life.
