Whips is a concept album with post-rock sounds by The Wind-Up Bird that was released in 2003. The concept of the album is represented by the tracklisting and is a thematic element in the music. Said concept is evidently a breakup, with the girl leaving an apology to someone (possibly the band member himself, as she says something like "I hope your show went well") as she says "Sorry That I've Become This Monster I Love You A Lot." Her statement is broken up into parts and sets the order of the tracklist. This phone message plays verbatim in several points on the album, starting on the affecting track "This" where the statement is repeated and granularly synthesized into increasing layers of distortion and noise. It's effective because it shows how a memorable, emotional statement can be warped by time and distorted in personal memory. Overall, the musical backdrop to this concept mirrors the post-rock sound used by many successful contemporary bands of the same genre like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Explosions in the Sky. This album relies more on electronic textures while the previous bands didn't too much if at all on their albums. In further contrast, the former bands used field recordings or played back narratives of people speaking, but it usually had no clear relationship to the music other than as a tonal signifier; on Whips, the field recording is the subject and dramatic force of the album, which makes this a unique "breakup record for post-rock fans." It is not