“Windfall,” the band’s second single from their forthcoming second album, is the sort of song that deserves to be heard through open windows in late May. Which is, rather neatly, exactly when it arrived.<\/p>
The track opens with a guitar riff from Collin Orr that wastes absolutely no time making its intentions clear \u2014 jangly, bright, carrying that particular ring that sits somewhere in the family tree between Johnny Marr’s Rickenbacker chime and the tightly-coiled New Wave energy of Squeeze or XTC at their most playful. It announces itself not with a shout but with a grin, which is its own kind of confidence. Orr reportedly conceived it as a standalone riff before the band coaxed it slowly into full shape across several weeks of collaborative ideating, and you can hear that organic development in the way it breathes. Nothing feels forced. Nothing feels like a committee decision. It feels like a song that wanted to exist.<\/p>
Julian Ferrara’s drumming provides the propulsive heart of the track \u2014 clean, assured, purposeful \u2014 and the news that “Windfall” marks the first time Ferrara has contributed backing vocals to a cadzo recording is one of those small biographical details that turns out to mean something musically. His voice adds a layer of communal warmth to the chorus that a single lead vocal simply couldn’t conjure alone. It transforms the song’s central message \u2014 that better days are coming, that the windfall is real and waiting \u2014 from a private reassurance into something closer to a collective oath.<\/p>
Will Benson’s keyboard work deserves particular attention, threading through the arrangement with the kind of tasteful restraint that only becomes visible when you try to imagine the song without it. And Will Brauch, who officially joined the band during the writing of this very track, contributes bass that does more than anchor the rhythm section \u2014 it shapes the sonic personality of the whole thing. His arrival mid-composition is the sort of fortuitous circumstance that bands only recognise in retrospect as transformative, yet cadzo seem to have known it immediately.<\/p>
Lyrically, “Windfall” plants its flag boldly: this is, by the band’s own acknowledgement, the most optimistic thing they have ever written. Lines about perseverance and the promise of imminent good fortune carry none of the cloying sentimentality that tends to sink well-meaning songs of this variety. The mood is earned rather than assumed. cadzo write about hope the way people actually feel it \u2014 tentatively, almost defiantly, aware of how easily it can be mocked and choosing to mean it anyway.<\/span><\/p> The Britpop and New Wave influences the band cite are not merely decorative. “Windfall” genuinely inhabits those traditions \u2014 the melodic directness of Blur’s poppier moments, the jittery forward momentum of early Blur or Elastica, even the guileless sincerity of a mid-period Supergrass cut \u2014 without ever becoming pastiche. This is a band that has done its listening and then moved on to doing something of its own. The Mile High City, it turns out, is well-suited to breeding bands with a transatlantic sensibility. The altitude perhaps lends a certain clarity of vision.<\/span><\/p> The b-side, “Colm Meaney,” remains something of an enigma without a listen \u2014 a title as bracingly deadpan as anything the Scottish indie scene produced in the late nineties, which is its own recommendation. The name alone suggests cadzo have a sense of humour as developed as their sense of melody, and the pairing of these two tracks constitutes a release that rewards attention on multiple levels.<\/span><\/p> As a statement of intent for a second album whose release date is yet to be confirmed, “Windfall” does something genuinely difficult: it makes the wait feel worthwhile before the album even has a title. cadzo are not reinventing any particular wheel, but they are spinning existing wheels with such evident joy and competence that reinvention seems beside the point. Pop music is not obligated to surprise. It is obligated to move you. This does.<\/span><\/p> The windfall, in this case, belongs to the listener.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>