BIRD NAMES are a perfectly off-centre pop band from Chicago. Their songs are often ragged and experimental whilst remaining inventive and catchy. Characterised by a kaleidoscopic approach to songwriting, Bird Names mix together a world of ideas, instruments and musical styles into a sound full of personality. Sing-along waltzes can walk hand-in-hand with ad hoc scrambled guitar lines yet some semblance of balance is always held on to.

The band are five in number, with the group comprising Nora Brank, Phelan Lavelle, Albert Schatz, Cohen J. and David Lineal. Writing and recording the songs is a collective effort, and in live performances the swapping of instruments between songs further demonstrates the freeform nature of the group. Over the last four years, Bird Names have played wide and far across the USA and have recorded a number of records, the last being 'Open Relationship' released by Unsound and Wham City last year.

'SINGS THE BROWNS'

People Should Get More Aware

UTR029 | Digipack CD / LP | 13 tracks, 40 mins | 4 May 2009 | Buy

Officially the band's fifth full-length album 'Sings The Browns' is typical in its scope. Escaping the acute lo-fidelity of previous efforts this record takes you to places which you never see coming. It is a sky's the limit album scribbled in loose, intuitive musicianship, reinforced by an ethos of radical unconscious play.

Inspired by street level living, emotional complexities and a quest to find a language to express the inexpressible, Bird Names like to cover a lot of ground. Such breadth is felt with a snapshot of the band's musical influences too, which draw on early female vocal pop, Fela Kuti, old folk, Patti Paige, honky tonk country, Dolly Mixture, doo wop, Bob Wills, swing, classic dub, kraut rock, 80s college rock, Beefheart and their friends' many bands.

There's an ingenuous love of melody that runs deep through all the tracks on 'Sings The Browns'. Songs like "Oh, Narcotopic Fantasy" and "Production" run with repetition and group vocalisations, whilst "People Should Get More Aware" is a more straight-up new wave hit only with whip-crack flourishes and a decidedly skewed Gamelan feel to it.

Parts of the record are direct and frank, others self-reflective and melancholic, yet at the heart of the album a celebration of instinct reigns. "I Had A Girl" is an aching ode to romantic incompatibility, with the lyric spinning the protagonist far from his intended in an attempt "to find out what's wicked inside me to slay". It's this thread of enchantment plunged into normalcy which the band excel at. 'Natural Weeds' imagines what it would be like to become suddenly rich and live in a tower, whilst a restless plucky guitar and woozy keyboard throb get called to attention by a rhythm that sounds like someone tap dancing amongst firecrackers.

'Sings The Browns' is as much about ideas as it is about contrasts. Album closer "Taxicabs And Bicycles" literally hatches from hubbub before the clouds part and allow the sunshine passage. "Plastic bags caught in the trees, mail me love letters if you please" sings Nora as the song skips along in a breezy fashion, lifting the mundane alongside the magical. 'Sings The Browns' has many unfolding messages and layers of instrumentation which make for obsessive listening and it's this attention to delicacy and circular thinking that sets Bird Names apart.