Bristol-based art-rock trio Sunglasz Vendor release their explosive debut album Unwinding.

Release Date: 25th April 2025

Label: Self Release

Format: Digital

EXPLOSIVE & EARNEST

Explosive and earnest, Unwinding reflects on the crushing mundanity of modern life through a classic guitar/bass/drums setup, teetering on the edge between the Guitar Hero canon and free-form anarchy.

It opens with its title track: a cacophony of sounds that mimic the unfurling of old springs and coils – like a dusty guitar, foraged from an attic, slowly being strung back into working order. It’s an awkward, uncomfortable noise, but it elapses into a powerfully howling hook.

“Just get home and unwind,” frontman Rafi Cohen screams – a common remedy many of us apply to the monotony of modern life. But sung into this song’s well-constructed abyss, it takes on a more insidious tone. “To be brain dead sludge in the comfort of your own home” speaks to the temptation to numb out, to remain closed off from the world. The sound tells one story in its passionate emo angst; the lyrics, quite another.

SOPHISTICATED THIEF

“Split the seam you sew from” arrives in the same breath as “Rip those dreams and follow / Paths well trodden, paths worth bearing,” and Unwinding’s contradictions start to come to life. Sophisticated Thief continues to explore impostor syndrome and feelings of societal detachment. It feels fitting that such an existentially self-interrogative record was recorded by William Carkeet (Robbie & Mona) in the underbelly of Bristol’s quintessential music venue The Louisiana during the bleak winter months. Where else could such introspective deliberations be coaxed into being?

As the record progresses, it moves beyond these lyrical themes, but continues to build its atmosphere through structure. The lack of conventional choruses in tracks like Prevent the Scum, Save Me Your Time, and Conductor, and a reliance on intricate, guitar-driven bridges and interludes, lend the album a cohesive narrative flow. We find ourselves lost in its internal logic – as any good album should encourage – and while the DIY production and pensive emo tone allude to bands like Squid and Blue Bendy, there’s something uniquely striking about Sunglasz Vendor’s vocals.

TRANSPARENT & VULNERABLE

The sheer volume of lyrics across the record is astounding. Many tracks trail off into near-stream-of-consciousness monologues – transparent, vulnerable, and often humorous. Take this from Ice Cream Tubs: “‘I don’t wanna be here’ / Is one of the truths that I should just keep a lid on / If I want to leave here with all four of my limbs on.” There’s little left to implication – and yet, we’re still left grasping for context, like we’ve been dropped in front of an open diary scrawled too quickly for us to catch up.

It’s hard to pin down what truly drives this album: the masterfully skittish, near-conflagrating guitarwork – evoking a post-rock Jack White (hear the instrumental track (unwinding) or the second half of Brick King for prime examples), or the endlessly searching, often devastating lyrics. What’s clear is that this three-piece packs a punch, delivering a gut-wrenching debut that flits constantly between the ordinary and extraordinary.

A WELCOME MOMENT OF CALM

Save Me Your Time brings a welcome moment of calm, with lo-fi overtones and a beautifully harmonic outro. Yet the album is also armoured with big-hitting singles released across 2024/25: the hook of Ice Cream Tubs will be lodged in your head for weeks, and the riff in Brick King could well be hall-of-fame worthy – rubbing shoulders with the likes of Dave Grohl and Noel Gallagher.

Though its instrumental palette is deliberately focused, Unwinding makes smart use of texture. A chorus of backing singers – featuring artists from Bristol’s DIY scene, like Minor Conflict, Pet Shimmers, and Foot Foot – adds a touch of lightness to otherwise angst-ridden sections. Rafi may be singing about “brain dead sludge” and being “buried alive after a long, long night,” but these voices help lift certain moments to a place that’s sweetly harmonic, even hopeful.

Downtuned guitars. Old coils unfurled. The release of lifelong tension. These are just some of the fragmented ways one might define this record. Unwinding candidly observes how people can be worn down – reshaped, even – by the slow crush of daily life. But we, the listeners, are changed for the better by the experience.

Sunglasz Vendor: Bandcamp / Facebook / Instagram

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