Windmill is the moniker of British Matthew Thomas Dillon. Following the success of Puddle City Racing Lights from 2007, he’s now released the new album Epcot Starfields, capturing his sense of impending doom threatening humanity captured through the portrait of a childhood visit to the Disney theme park, Epcot Center.
Lead by a piano and Matthew Dillons characteristic voice, Windmill plays energic and playful indie pop that sound a bit similar to the likes of The Flaming Lips, Grandaddy, or even Norwegian Einar Stray.
At the peaks of his songs, Dillon sings in sort of a nasal and squeaky manner, and on Puddle City Racing Lights, that was part of just about every song’s chorus together with some epic drums or a loud piano. That’s one of the main reasons that, even if it was really poppy and catchy, his previous album was quite predictable and left you exhausted after listening through the whole thing. On Epcot Starfields, he varies the singing and uses different parts of his voice’s register, making it a lot easier to listen to. The melodies also vary much more, making the songs less predictable, while keeping the same feel. At the same time as I’d like to call this a good thing, it’s just not the same to hear him singing with a deep voice.
He’s definitely developed his sound on this album, it’s just too bad that he lost some of what really made the previous album great.