With a seriously impressive sense of melody and a clear grasp of her own desires in the music-making process, wingspeak soars with a debut EP packed with promise.
wingspeak- ‘College St.’
The Toronto-based Bianca Pocpoc (wingspeak) has accomplished a lot on this first foray into music. With a variety of different instruments on display- from guitar to Harmonica and beyond- she makes the most of the EP’s short 17-minute runtime to uplift and inspire.
With many of the songs written between 2013-2019 and then recorded through 2021/22, there is a variance from track to track that keeps the listener interested throughout. Opening with the stripped-back ‘Center Stage’, Bianca shows a dedication to sun-touched melodies that brighten with each new entry. Her declaration that she “clearly knows (her) place/ anywhere but center stage” belies an underlying anxiety that can easily be put to rest. Bianca has already made a strong argument as to why she belongs in centre stage through the pure strength of this EP alone.
While ‘Walk on Water’ offers an effective if not often used analogy on keeping oneself afloat while understanding their own limitations, the one-two punch of ‘Unexpected Song’ and ‘Into the Void’ are the heart of this release. While entirely different in premise and performance, the clean production and transcendent hooks of both best capture the bright path Bianca has ahead of her.
“There is a variance from track to track that keeps the listener interested throughout.”
The lyrics of ‘Unexpected Song’ address a sense of containment- with Bianca asserting that “tension keeps building like a Storm”, with the resulting repetition of daily life leaving her “feeling torn”. ‘Into the Void’ in contrast feels like a release from the previous track’s built-up pressure. Bianca declares that while “the stars are dead”, they still continue to shine and offer hope that we “could conquer all that there is”; be that love, monsters or the void itself.
The last track ‘between us’ ties together many of the lyrical references found throughout, bringing the project to its conclusion. The line “the starry sky is all that you have” and references to “sailing across the seas” and “diving underneath” the waves to hide are particularly evocative of ‘Walk on Water’ and ‘Into the Void’. As the track draws to a close, Bianca unifies the themes of the project into one final rallying cry: that she’s “not going down without a fight”. With all the promise present across ‘College St.’, this is the best message any fan could hope to hear.
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Words Angus Nisbet
