I had that magic feeling, the same feeling I had before I spun Royal City and June Panic, about Birddog: the feeling that I's about to discover a frumpy diamond or a low-key giant, some music that would give pause to self-mutilating goth tweens and soothe insomniacs learning Latin to improve their tattoos. Maybe I got wooed by their fourth album's portentous cover art-- a photorealistic painting of a hole in a stormcloud over a body of water that had me convinced that there was a God, and a God's butthole. Alas, this underwhelming "long player" (on my property, 7 songs in 24 minutes is called an EP) teaches us why Birddog are best known for an alumnus (they're the farm team from which Wilco recruited Glenn Kotche) and their guestlist (Elliott Smith and Edith Frost on their last record, Jason Loewenstein and Paul Oldham on this one).
As a band, Birddog acquits itself as a delivery system for moody, mystic-toned neo-folk, and the presence of onetime Bonnie "Prince" sidemen Loewenstein and Oldham help to hint at a more streamlined Palace sound, what Joya should have sounded like were it rehearsed or produced worth a durn. These unconventionally or at least atypically alluring figures are a perfect match for frontman Bill Santen's faux Brit/psych enunciations ("night" is "noi-eye-ght") that suggest a whimsical, but slightly disturbed, mid-60s mix of Donovan, Neil Young, and fruity pebbled Arthur Lee. (Okay, it's David Byrne as Peter Pan.) (Okay, it's The Vehicle Flips versus The Lightning Seeds, but slow-burn.)
Santen's fey and elfin self pens lyrics about not-much that rhyme-or-don't. Their dilly-dallying begs for some antonym of "urgent," and their occasional bad poetry is saved by the occasional great line such as, "Hoping for a hooker or a handout." This is from "Cities", which busts into a righteous artwad-Skynyrd riff. "Red Red Wine" is a brooding Lynchian antifable about needles and devils, its forlorn bridges pointing out what a markedly unfestive departure it is from the other song you know by its name. "Beaches" ain't got aerosol do to with Bette Midler or the breeze under anybody's featherflaps, but it is the band's poppiest peak, refraining, "Without you/ Without you." Still, a pop Birddog is like The Wallflowers if they were on Shimmy-Disc.
"$100 Wedding" can't help but sum up this band's vibe: low-maintenance, sparsely attended ceremony. There's something admirable about how this band waves no cudgel, doesn't appear to be aiming for its audience's memory, and probably doesn't mind still bumping like an opening act after eight years. This disc makes for inoffensive incidental music, and that's no faint-praise write-off: their sound is shyly expansive rather than invasive. But damnit, I was on the prowl for a new unsung visionary, and Songs from Willipa Bay just reminds me of another Washington waterway: Cape Disappointment.
