Nina Winder-Lind is erupting

While evoking shambolic British twee pop –The Pastels, The Raincoats, and NME’s legendary C86 compilation come to mind – Nina Winder-Lind vocals are hardly demure. Classically educated on cello in Stockholm before relocating to Brighton and forming art punk band The New Eves, Wild Love represents a melange of bodily energy channeled through these experiences. Whether describing lovers, friends, or landscapes, Winder-Land’s titling remains befitting; she sings with real bite, bleating and squawking through her debut LP’s 11 songs. One is left with the impression that, in order to live, enunciation and breath must be squeezed of their full potential.

Paired with her voice, the electric guitar accesses latent modes of liberation. “Headfirst” recovers early rock ’n’ roll simplicity, accompanied by a jubilant solo. Winder-Lind recalls her male peers being steered towards the instrument in childhood with unequal encouragement; the genre might be dead, but not everyone has had a fair shot at reviving it. The language of bodies remains paradigmatic, the source of our singer’s vocal elasticity. “You're not an Angel” utilizes such techniques as a reminder (or celebration) of corporeal mortality: “We are animals / we’re alive,” Winder-Lind asserts. We hear about air in the lungs and light on the eyes, all that is flesh buzzing with emotion.

Elsewhere, the affect skews towards doo-wop’s swaying sentimentality. One detects echoes of K Records’ filtering of 50s and 60s girl group sounds through punk’s DIY mentality and tangibility; the piano carrying the final third of “Love you so” harkens back to the triplet-driven rhythm of oldies like “Earth Angel.” Winder-Land’s vibrato warble, however, eschews studio perfection or teen-idol polish in favor of rawness. Classic templates are also refreshed with a feminist sensibility communicated throughout the album, especially on the declaratory “Girls.” The group variously want to not care, to fit in, to play guitar, to live like monkeys – desires Winder-Lind grappled with through moments of confused crying and guilt-ridden lust, forming part of the album’s central manifesto: “I didn’t understand my power / Until I completely exploded.”

Historically, these are familiar formulas, even if the singer-songwriter approach and orchestral instrumentation diverges from Talulah Gosh or Beat Happening. An insistence on embodiedness similarly, under scrutiny, veers towards therapeutic wonkiness. For all discussion of the somatic, one yearns for more tenacious textures and production halfway through the tracklist.

Elsewhere, though, Winder-Land’s intrigue with amateurism emboldens the work, proving that limitations – whether imposed or inherent – drive creativity in a manner the oft-celebrated free play of bodily sensation cannot.

In press material, Winder-Land highlights the joy of dancing alongside others to this record, partially a product of jamming with abandon and her bandmates’ contributions. Unsurprisingly then, Wild Love excels when those emotions explode from one towards another – a command to “Burst, baby burst” during “This is our life,” the exasperation of “Foremothers” – to bridge interpersonal junctures through vocal expression. That, like the album’s influences, can be timeless.