Crooked Wing

It's not always an easy listen, but These New Puritans have made a career out of challenging themselves and listeners, a worthy pursuit that they continue here.

It’s austere, minimal, and starkly beautiful, but incorporates some of Hidden’s pounding rhythmic heft on “A Season in Hell” and “Wild Fields.”

An elegant, engrossing return, that marries its creators’ love of both industrial and ecclesiastical aesthetics while remaining accessible and emotionally easy to grasp. Welcome back.

Crooked Wing is another accomplished, thought-provoking instalment from a duo operating from a highly distinctive position.

While Crooked Wing finds These New Puritans at their most refined and fractured, the album won’t be for everyone. Its refusal to deliver easy pleasures might leave some cold. And for all its inventiveness, there are moments where the almost academic precision threatens to override the emotional core. Yet, it’s exactly what it feels like, a requiem for the mechanical age, a love song to decay, and a stark reminder of the beauty that can be found in the shadow of ruins.

All in all, it underlines that These New Puritans remains a band apart. [Jul 2025, p.84]

Five albums in, These New Puritans are still finding new ways to startle and surprise. [Jun 2025, p.104]

Contains some of their most objectively beautiful songs. [Jun 2025, p.41]

As much as has been made over the years about their esoteric methods, what they've always managed to do as a band is keep clever-clever at bay. This continues on Crooked Wing. For all their hifalutin techniques, they remain at their sublime best when most heart-on-sleeve.

Ambitious and heartfelt, Crooked Wing might have needed more time – or anger – to fully reveal qualities we manage to briefly glimpse only.