To some secular types, the most interesting thing about faith is watching someone lose it. When you waver from an ironic disbelief in religion to a stricken doubt in yourself, you've got yourself a great arc. Or as Deleted Scenes put it, more off-handedly, "Got god, got boring/ Lost god, stayed boring, got drunk."
Birdseed Shirt isn't a record specifically about faith, but they work the theme hard. It carries through as they swing from grizzled jokes to unabashed emo bellows. The disgusted drunken Catholic schoolboy waltz of "Deacons" sits easily with the upbeat vibes of "City That Never Wakes Up". And the country humility of "One Long Country Song" still can't quite take a heartbreak lying down.
The band's boast that they're influenced by both the Danielson Famile and Talking Heads holds water, not least because frontman Dan Scheuerman has the range and power to give direction to their genre wanderings. He can carry two vocal modes-- modest, country and a little bit strange, and brave and ferocious; he saves the latter approach for special occasions, always making it pay off.
The songwriting is strong throughout the set, and even the short songs aren't slight. With Matt Dowling primarily on bass, Chris Scheffey on guitar, and Brian Hospital on drums, the band is a well-worn quartet that takes risks in the arrangements but never gets clever for the sake of it. They do big indie rock, like the build-up to the horns and harmony vocals that punctuate the opener, "Turn to Sand". The singalong and warm guitars of "Take My Life" make the deeply emo evocation of suicide surprisingly palatable. But they also picked up the best scraps from post-rock, including the vibes on "Deacons" and "City That Never Wakes Up", or the organ on "Fake IDs", a descendent of Radiohead's "Let Down" and the album's must-hear cut.
Credit to producer L. Skell, Birdseed Shirt isn't a knock-down-the-walls powerhouse, so much as a well-balanced demonstration of all the band's best sides-- from thoughtful existentialism to friendly irony to strange, drowsy downers. The finale, "Get Your Shit Together for the Holidays", encapsulates its spirit: warm and familiar at the outset, sliding into a massive, deliciously echoey climax, with dark lyrics that end on redemption-- except redemption basically means telling the protagonist to get off his or her ass and do the right thing for a couple of days. This is a young band, but they already know that good cheer will only last you so long.
