by Brad Roberts
The sound of the harmonium cuts the silence as "Lil Bo Blue" begins Dirt Bird's debut EP, Summer Night Hours. (The plain brown wrapper at right represents the ReSleeve package it comes in)Next comes the oddly distant vocals of Claire Mckeown and Athena LeGrand as they sing in harmonies that are somewhat extra-terrestrial, like music beamed in from Venus, occasionally punctuating the droning with what sounds like a crowd applauding or hail on a car roof. That sets the mood for the whole album. Semi-operatic mood lullabies that lull the listener into a state of suspended animation. Like floating above the earth, looking down.
The simplicity and the solid vision coupled with the classically trained voices results in one of the most unusual and unique records I've heard out of this whole rock movement. The lyrics are obtuse enough to be open to many interpretations making the compositions sound deep and mysterious, like on "Spirit and Opportunity".
Dirt Birdadds a drum beat to the the title tune, "Summer Night Hours", tipping the album toward a more rock flavor, albeit with similar pure vocals, augmented with a sudden military sounding drum march. "Cliftons" features a tinny, honky-tonk type piano paired with vocals reminiscent of Bertolt Brecht or even Gilbert and Sullivan until they begin resembling the female chorus used in the music for Disney's Bambi. Their references come from all over the musical map. There's even a number called "Buckminster Fuller", dedicated to the 20th Century designer/inventor of, among other things, the geodesic dome. (I actually saw him give a lecture at M.I.T. in the early seventies), which focuses on his concept of "Spaceship Earth". Appropriate for the ethereal atmosphere.
"Easy" is a nice, sing-a-long anthem, while "Jabberwocky/Alice Pleasance Liddel" marries the peotry of Lewis Carroll to recognition of the actual inspiration for the Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandstories. As this book was my favorite as a child (and is probably responsible for my slanted take on life), I love hearing other's interpretations of anything based on this material.
There's tremendous musical ambition on display in this recording and one has to give a nod in it's direction for it's audacity alone. Who releases a semi-operatic album of tone poems in 2011? Dirt Bird, that's who! Congratulations to Claire Mckeown for a promising first album. In the interest of full disclosure, Claire sent me this EP, but this review would have been the same in any case.
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