Birdbath

by Jim Merrett

Unsung heroes

"One show at the Bristol Carling Academy urged an EMI A&R man to waft a contract under their noses, as long as they 'got an image and a Marilyn Manson type frontman'. Admirably, they laughed in his face. This would be the same EMI that Guy Hands is currently running into the ground. So it goes."

Here at New-Noise, we love that personal touch. So when an album from plucky noiseniks Birdbath lands in our postbox with an inlay that begins "to new-noise", all lower case, you know we're on to a good thing. Only if it was made from letter cut out of tabloids would we be more impressed.

"bIRdbATh have just released their 2nd album and recently played alongside Trumans Water, though things were not always so rosy…" it reads. Listening to it, things don't even sound that rosy now. Blimey.

Their effort '…and then' follows a decade of hard graft floating around the West Country – well, sporadic hard graft, at least. The records show more hiatuses than gigs. One show at the Bristol Carling Academy urged an EMI A&R man to waft a contract under their noses, as long as they “got an image and a Marilyn Manson type front man”. Admirably, they laughed in his face. This would be the same EMI that Guy Hands is currently running into the ground. So it goes.

This same disjointed nature can be heard in their sound. At once laden with emotion yet as cold and sparse as Arctic tundra. Spiky but strangely comforting, like being attacked by a duvet. It’s a hazy, smoky, stoned mash of everything from Mogwai and Shellac to Sonic Youth but rarely anything but itself. Album opener ‘Silence Is The New Heavy Metal’ says it all by saying very little – the song is about 70 per cent through before the – even then fairly minimal – vocals kick in.

Currently in the throws of a second – or third or fourth, maybe – wind, a slew of material is promised, along with a national tour. A tidy reminder that, for all the right reasons to be in this field, carving out a career isn’t one of them.

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