Bird Names - Sings The Browns

Bird Names
Sings The Browns
(2009, Upset The Rhythm)
RIYL = Ariel Pink, Pumice, Smith Westerns

Bird Names are incredibly weird fellows which is part of the reason why they are incredibly awesome. Seriously, they’re out there. The second component to their incredible awesomeness is that they mix that weirdness with an unhealthy hankering for pop music. Sings The Browns, the follow up to the equally bizarre and equally enjoyable Open Relationship, is a continuation on the path to an aural pollution of the squawking, clunking, spitting and chirping variety. The variety of pop that collapses your ear drums with a rush of spittle wetted sugary pop goodness; something that these ears can’t quite get enough of. Listening to this album earlier could have easily landed it onto my 2009 year end list, but times are rough nowadays and my attentive gears have been slowing considerably to the multitudes of audio gold that is out in the world. Missing Sings The Browns is really the prime example of that. The garbage pale glory of their broomstick orchestra is just about a 300 million crayons high. What? That doesn’t make sense? Listen to Sings The Browns and it will. I mean it is hard to really go on about the band. Their nonchalant inventiveness and off-the-cuff hooks tend to short circuit any comprehensible discourse about the band. It’s their magic weapon and, possibly, their Achilles heel, because how am I supposed to sell you on this album when every time I try to talk about it marbles spill out of my mouth? But then again, who wouldn’t pay attention to someone spontaneously spewing marbles about in their excitement over an album. It’s like an oxymoron. Which, in a way, is what Bird Names is: an oxymoron. Their sound reeks of disinterestedness and childishness, a wacky disregard, but their end product, their songs, are filled with complex textures and a carousel of ideas that are incredibly smart and catchy. So there you go, possibly one sentence of actual critique. Sings The Browns is simply that good. (Watch out for Sings The Browns on vinyl, coming soon).

-Thistle