The backstory matters. Vocalist Liam Croker wrote this during lockdown, processing the accumulated damage of a touring cycle that swept through the UK, the USA and Europe with something approaching recklessness. The result is less a comeback anthem and more a frank conversation with a mirror. *Are you still alive? Are you still yourself?* These are not the questions of a man celebrating — they are the questions of a man genuinely uncertain of the answer, and that tension is what gives the track its considerable emotional weight.
Musically, WINACHI are doing something quietly interesting here. Their established grammar has always leaned heavily on funk — groove-forward, rhythmically loose, the kind of music that wants your feet before it wants your brain. *State of Mind* keeps the groove but shifts its centre of gravity. The bass and drums, anchored by multi-instrumentalist Antony Egerton and percussionist Inder Goldfinger, carry that familiar rhythmic undertow, but everything above it tilts toward something cooler, more oceanic. Think the Madchester canon filtered through a decade of road miles: the shuffle of Happy Mondays, the melancholic grandeur of The Stone Roses, but worn down to something more personal and less baggy. The funk is still in the bones; the flesh is now distinctly North West indie.
Croker's vocal performance deserves particular attention. He is not a showy singer — there is no cathedral-reaching climax, no studied moment of vulnerability designed for the algorithm. Instead, he occupies the middle distance with a steady, weathered authority that suits the material perfectly. Christy Bellis's backing vocals add a warmth in the right places, lifting the choruses without overwhelming the song's essential quiet. This is not a record trying to sound large. It is trying to sound honest, which is considerably more difficult.
The production is where *State of Mind* most clearly announces its ambitions. Mixed and mastered by Dave Pemberton at Manchester Recording Studios — a man whose credits include The Prodigy and Groove Armada — the single possesses a genuinely cinematic spaciousness. Pemberton has treated the track not as a collection of competing sounds but as a piece of atmosphere, allowing each element room to breathe without ever letting the arrangement feel sparse. The result is a song that sounds unhurried and large, which is exactly the right approach for lyrics this interior.
It would be easy to mistake *State of Mind* for a mid-tempo record going through its paces. It is not. The looseness is deliberate, the restraint architectural. WINACHI are a band who know what they are doing — they have earned that knowledge on stages from Manchester to Minneapolis — and this single feels like the first track a band makes when they have stopped performing for audiences and started making music for themselves. That shift, from outward to inward, is usually where the most interesting work begins.
The video animation, handled by Edoublelle Animations, reinforces the song's contemplative register without overexplaining it. The visuals serve the music rather than compete with it, which is rarer than it should be.
*State of Mind* is available now. WINACHI headline the Warrington Music Festival on 6 June, and support Starsailor at the Old Market Place, Warrington, on 25 July.