Love is a 4 letter word

 By Henry Lipput

Love is all over the new album, A 4 Letter Word (Bandcamp/Spinout Nuggets), from The Shop Window: there’s love in the lyrics and love in the playing of the songs.

The lyrics on the album are about the many ways a person makes the journey to find or keep the love of their life. On “The Lay of the Land:” “I won't fall out with love/It’s the meaning of life.” And “Lighthouse” uses the metaphor for a beam of light that guides you to safety: “When you radiate light/It’s a window to the heart of you/A lighthouse of hope/Sending a beacon to my core.” “That Feeling” works in much the same way with a message of love lighting the way: “I’ll be your rock/On a stormy day/I’ll be your sun/When the skies are grey.”

Band is also a four-letter word, and this love is best shown in the way the four members of the band (at the time of the album’s recording) love playing together. The Show Window is obviously a tight-knight unit; two of its members, Carl Mann and Syd Oxlee, have known each other since the mid-90s.

As soon as the needle hits the vinyl on the album’s first song, “Eyes Wide Shut,” it’s clear from Mann’s opening licks and jangles, the solid background provided by Martin Corder’s bass and Phil Esphee’s drums, Oxlee’s keyboard washes, and then the intertwined vocals of Mann and Oxlee. The band is a four-man operation that operates as one and they love the distinctive sound they make. This happens throughout the album.

You may have heard the four songs The Shop Window released prior to 2021’s The State of Being Human (a year-end favorite) as well as the four before the new album but you’d be wrong to categorize the group as a singles band. A 4 Letter Word shows this talented four-some achieving so much more. You can hear it on the wondrous “Dancing Light,” the jangly “It’s by Design” with its too-quick Corder and Esphee solo, and as The Shop Window takes a trip down Morrisey-Marr lane with the dance-around-the-living room vibe of “Circles Go Round.” And that’s just for starters.