Yes, you can hear echoes of Cocteau Twins or Slowdive in the gauzy atmospheres – particularly on “Baby’s Breath” and “Gypsophilia" – as filtered and created by Dottie Cockram’s voice and the blurred textures of Ben Easton’s guitar work, but Birding isn’t a collage of reference points, it feels very well lived in and considered. As a project that initially began with the pair experimenting together, their sound has been given a much more physical dynamic with the addition of drummer Harry Catchpole. It’s his insistent pulse that tethers the music, grounding and allowing just enough room to fly without drifting off completely.
Lyrically Birding uses fragile ornithological and ecological metaphors to explain universal human experiences. They focus on the complexities of human ‘interference’, in nature and in our interconnected relationships, to mirror fragility and tensions within a confusing, spinning world. It’s never used in a heavy-handed way, but it’s there, especially when lines float by sounding calming and serene, only for their meaning to veer off, before landing somewhere much more sobering.
It’s incredibly tempting to call the album “ethereal”, but
it would also be hugely reductive and lazy as there’s an innate strength
in the band’s delivery that keeps everything from dissolving
completely. It’s certainly seductive. And dreamy. Perhaps what’s most
striking about Birding is how cohesive it is for a debut, every
swell is intentional and carefully placed without ever feeling
clinical. There’s warmth and space while including all the finely
crafted minutia needed to give songs genuine depth and the band have
resisted the urge to overcomplicate things. Album closer “Birding” is
the finest example but honestly it’s littered everywhere.
For a collection of songs so preoccupied with vulnerability and honing in closely, Birding
feels remarkably expansive which comes from how it makes small moments
feel significant rather than sounding noisily grand in a cinematic
sense. Okay, maybe it goes there a couple of times, like the endings of
“Seabird” and the epic “Alfie”, when the cacophonous sounds of My Bloody
Valentine are conjured up, but overall you become absorbed in simply
listening, right until you realise, almost too late, that you’ve been
holding your breath all along.
