Bird Names, Chandeliers, Golden Birthday
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Though the Bird Names have released a stack of recordings, Wooden Lake is only their second album on a proper label. It’s not the kind of record with a ready-made audience: cheaply recorded and packed with unidentifiable sounds and junky rhythms, it’s too noisy and unhinged to register as pop, but at the same time it’s too reliant on familiar genres (psych, folk, vintage country) to impress anyone as truly avant-garde. Take “Nobody Loves Me,” for example. It starts with a simple stomping riff and a four-way vocal part built of repetitive cells moving at different speeds, simultaneously recalling Philip Glass, gamelan music, and doo-wop, then suddenly turns into a twinkly, fluffy-cute folk tune a preschooler could get into. Despite its abruptness, the transition doesn’t feel forced–in fact it’s one of those rare moments of nonchalant brilliance that can have a more profound effect on me than some whole songs.
Nora Brank, who mostly plays drums, couldn’t make it to the park, but she calls halfway through the evening to make sure she’s not missing anything important. She’s sort of the odd one out, not because she’s a woman but because she’s new. Though the Bird Names have existed under that name only since 2004, Schatz, Hartz, and Lineal have been playing together since high school, in various combinations and with a busload of collaborators. (They’re all 25 now, and so is Brank.) The Bird Names’ lineup has always been “nebulous,” in their words–it once swelled to 12 for a show in LA, thanks to a crowd of friends and friends of friends–but most versions have included at least one woman. Lineal says, “In a more ideal world, we’d all be women.” Everyone cracks up at his pseudo profundity, and I ask him to explain. “I’d rather just let that stand,” he replies.
These guys are pretty good at witty banter–their conversations are as confounding, entertaining, and enlightening as their music, and I feel like we could just hang out all night. But then a city truck rolls by, fogging the air with mosquito-killing chemicals, and the atmosphere starts to change. We segue into bad tour stories and anxiously check out the storm clouds moving in. Eventually we have to call it quits–it’s like last call for dudes who like to hang out in parks instead of bars.
