Album Review – The State of Being Human by The Shop Windows (2021) (Spinout Nuggets)
It feels as though this Carl Mann and Syd Oxlee (formerly of 90s act Westpier) project have been wiggling out jangle receptors for years now. In reality this is actually their debut album, from which they have released a handful of singles from over the last year.
The best of these singles, Mannequin Lies, Sad Eyes and Evacuate represent a side to the release that wraps slightly crooning harmonies and a warm, laconic tone so reminiscent of 90s Britpop legends, The Bluetones, to a jangly indie-pop core that will sit so perfectly with fans of Lost Ships and The Moonlight Parade.
The other primarly aesthetic to the album is also so very perfectly 90s. However, in tracks such as Disengage The Robots , Break Down Walls and the superlative stand out, Out of Reach, the more fragile indie-pop machinations are subservient to a renewed tempo and dynamism that is released in the most gregarious of The Cry style, chiming jangle.
Available digitally (now) and on CD and vinyl on 23rd June 2021, if ever there was a band that deserved to be part of the brilliant recent series of releases that the Spinout Nuggets label has imparted upon the world, it is this one.
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