The Bird Names - "Wooden Lake/Sexual Diner"

The Bird Names - New Mexico (Unsound 2007)

The Bird Names – Wooden Lake/Sexual Diner / Unsound

I lost faith in the buzzing freak-folk style tag a few months back. Not that I decided to completely dismiss the genre, but I stopped associating a particular style of music when someone used it to describe a band’s sound. I actually can pinpoint the exact album that near completely dissuaded me from ever using the description again: Lavender Diamond’s Imagine Our Love. Not that the album is necessarily bad or anything of that nature, but is it freak-folk? Not even close. It’s indie-pop with folksy influences. C’mon blogosphere, sure it was quirky, sure it was hippie-ish, sure it was daffy, but freak-folk it was not. Where is the freak? When I see that tag used, I want my folk confusingly endearing, poorly recorded, slightly alienating and tough to wrap my head around. Whether its laced with pop sensibilities or not, it should be strewn through unyielding carnival rides, doused in moonshine and baked through and through. I want the antithesis of Lavender Diamond’s crystal clear, unabashedly innocent, nearly new age folk; I want The Bird Names.

Though they have been minstrels of Chicago’s underground art-space scene for a number of years now, my first encounter with The Bird Names (I am not completely sure the “The” is how they prefer it; I have never seen it written that way before, but everything their new CD suggests points towards the inclusion of the proper “The”) came a few months back at Version Fest 07. Surrounded by a nearly living mosaic of local art, the quirky collective filled The Co-Prosperity Sphere (a gem of an art-space on the South Side) with ragtag jubilance by way of mushy soundwaves and group vocals. At the time, I suspected that the space had more to do with the poor sound quality of their continuously instrument-swapping set, but now that I have heard the album, it may have been designed to sound exactly like it did. The endearing five-piece somehow perfectly recreated the feeling of an in-the-bathroom with a handheld-tape-recorder seven-inch, which always gives the listener a misguided sense of “hey, I can do that,” though it is always much harder than it seems. And The Bird Names first effort for Portland’s Unsound Records, Wooden Lake/Sexual Diner, may just give you that exact same feeling, though repeated spins of the album reveal songwriting much deeper than the initial “art kids tomfoolery” sense you get after just the first listen.

Album opener “Tepid Waters” commences with a lo-fi, slightly melodic “la la laaaaa” undercut by a near-sinister baritone (which makes frequent appearances throughout the album) that I think is saying “owwww.” My initial reaction was “oh god, here we go again,” but then the song opens up with a catchy keyboard melody, shaker-heavy percussion, glockenspiel pings and multi-layered sing-a-long la la la’s that at some point transform into the song’s chorus. It is crunchy, poorly recorded and at first, slightly annoying in that unshowered-nomadic-folk band kind of way, but it grows on you; much like that flower growing out of a hippie’s dreads-turned-garden hairdo. And while there are a few songs that don’t quite escape this pigeonhole, the ones that do very much carry the album. “New Mexico” has an enchanting melody carved out by wordless vocals, acoustic guitar and a near unrecognizable keyboard; with the gong-like cymbal crashes, it almost sounds Oriental. “Smoovebiz” is on a similar tip, swelling with magnetic melodies and ebbing back into a lo-fi pond of moss-like soundwaves. You have to imagine these recordings are very similar to early outings by bands like Akron/Family or MV & EE. “Nobody Loves Me” may be the most infectious track of all with its round-robin title-chorus and lines like “nobody loves me, but that’s ok, I’d almost rather have it that way.” Under-laced by a toy piano and echoing coos, it’s as wonderfully innocent as only D.I.Y. collective-folk can be.

This being The Bird Names’ third full-length album, it makes sense that their songwriting is maturing and escaping the typical confines of early, let’s-get-baked-and-jam folk. There are still aspects of makeshift song structures, but they are increasingly seamless and on their way to transcending the two-minute everyone-yell-along mold. Wooden Lake/Sexual Diner’s four-track quirk-folk will absolutely leave all of the Lavender Diamond fans scratching their heads in utter confusion, which perhaps is the best compliment I could give the Chicago collective. It’s freak-folk for all the best reasons: confusingly endearing, unabashedly lo fidelity and tough to understand at first. It’s melodic, textural and innocent without being annoyingly so. It’s an album that is obviously not for everyone and probably not for most people, but if you are searching for the true definition of what freak-folk should sound like, look no further than The Bird Names.