Veteran Manchester, UK-based Future-Retro-Modernist rockers THE SPEED OF SOUND return to kick off a year of dizzyingly ambitious musical activity with a brand new single. “West Wind” is a gale-force gust of garage-rock grit showing off every bit of the band's signature sound, and a level of energy that's no less than astonishing for a group entering its 35th year as a performing entity.

“West Wind” -- which is also the lead track on the band's forthcoming album, soon to be announced by Big Stir Records – hits the ground running and doesn't slow down for all its breezy 2-minute, 35-second duration. Recklessly fast and invigorating rock and roll, borrowing a Bo Diddley beat cunningly melded with a Wagnerian horn section, the irrepressible rushing wild power unleashed by “West Wind” crushes anything in its path, so hold on tight and ride out the trip with it. The aforementioned horns (trumpet and flugelhorn by Bob Dinn) augment the primal noise kicked up by the band as their two vocalists, singer-guitarist-songwriter JOHN ARMSTRONG and ANNE-MARIE CROWLEY, trade weather warnings over the driving rhythms of drummer JOHN BROADHURST, bassist KEVIN ROACHE and the keyboards of HENRY ARMSTRONG.

“Lyrically this is a protest song; a metaphor for the dominance of the all-pervading major label ‘music industry’ onslaught, snowplowing independent artists out of the way,” offers Armstrong. That's no surprise: astute and barbed social commentary and advocacy for independent art have always been at the core of the band's lyrical outlook, and if anything the new material to be unleashed this year take those themes to a new and ever-sharper level. “West Wind” in particular plays out like Dylan and Baez by way of The Clash, and it's impossible not to take notice.

It's all done with THE SPEED OF SOUND’s boundless drive and life-affirming buoyant energetic zing. Longtime followers will recognize the approach, but still marvel at the vigor of the performance, and that's part of what the band has tapped into for the cornucopia of material to see release in 2024. “West Wind”, for all its meteorological might, is just the earliest forecast of the maelstrom to come, and as someone once said, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows: it hails from Manchester, and THE SPEED OF SOUND is set to soar on it.