Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard has played their cards slowly, carefully. Skinwalker marks their second release and after eight years of the band cautiously trickling and teasing new material it is satisfying to hear a confident step for a deserving troupe of musicians. Horrifying cover art lends itself to the creepypasta of old and the natural fear of the dark. Harmful witches are intent on disguising themselves and preying on the trust of similar imagery. Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard has already trialled this with their frank and tongue-in-cheek John Lennon is My Jesus Christ, but on Skinwalker it takes a bolder route. Rummage through the leafy forest, the clicking lights and camcorder in the hand of a man scattering through the dark, presumably the album cover. What a heavy, horrifying entrance.
Despite those chilling introductions, the first track proper, National Rust, has a Talking Heads funk to it. Those spirited and unique shots of warbling instrumentals and We are all rusting and creaking away as we figure out what we want to do with ourselves. Whether you’re hammering down the road to twenty-five or have reached the prime of the fifties, there is still a deep and constant hunger to perform a wild act of personal transgression. To feel yourself moved by adrenalin or near-death experience. Bottle it up and walk the line. Listen to Skinwalker while you do. In the age of streaming, it is harder still to come by albums which feel made for the complete encounter. Absurd it may be to even mention, it is considerate for Skinwalker to not play to those expectations of streaming services. Here is an album which must be heard. No way around it, a real joy to experience and a continued gift, always giving on new listens as the sharp and slick mixing takes listeners through the merry and daunting forests filled with creatures of the night.
We are all Basset Hounds at the end of it. Get back to it. Away from the sniffing lines of dog Wikipedia entries and into the tensions of The Drowning Bell. There is no way of coming out the other end without placing Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard up there with the great lyricists. Those who commanded mood through tense instrumental, their voice a mere part of the puzzle as Leonard Cohen maintained in Dance Me to the End of Love. We do not dodge the tackles and elbows from loved ones. Their impact means we still feel. The heartbreak, the guts spilling on the page and in the clubs – the replacement of you because your fragility is nothing special, disconnected from the history between two ex-lovers. Skinwalker is tortured and eye-wateringly beautiful. It is the standout track of a solid sophomore record worth consoling yourself with when those hard times hit, out of nowhere yet inevitably so.
Dive into the white ocean Therapy mentions. Those hounds are still going to be in there, ripping at your limbs until you take action, and put it down. Man’s best friend is seen as one of those skinwalkers trying to hunt you down. But you are hunting down the same. We have no free time because work is what gives us joy but the joy is running dry. Therapy calls it out – makes it clear that you are a slave to yourself, prattling away at a keyboard for fourteen hours a day before spending the other ten in a walking coma, making coffee and stretching your legs on the short walk to a Tesco Express lived on top of by a bloke who smokes the cheapest weed around. The stench takes away from the ready meals and the ready meals take away from the host in a vicious cycle which Skinwalker will throw you from, like the passenger of a car careering through vicious mounds of snow.
