Music For Dead Birds – And Then It Rained For Seven Days
Music for Dead Birds are an Irish band with a name inspired by an encounter with a deceased duck on a sidewalk. If you are a fan of the morbid, the image is up on the band’s MySpace page.
What Music for Dead Birds are trying to do is channel as many different styles of music as possible into one album. They’re a new band but already have an admirable number of listeners on one popular online music site. Those listeners have tagged them as punk, pop, folk, experimental, and acoustic. A bit incongruous – but true.
The first song is ’17′ and it starts the album off with the Beatlesque declaration ‘She was seventeen!’ Several first-track reviews are prone to include a note along the lines of “it sets the tone for the rest of the album.” But it should be made perfectly clear that ’17′ sounds nothing like the rest of the album. This is their ‘punk, pop’ bit. You brace yourself for the next song – ‘What did you expect?’ Certainly not this – it barely sounds like the band you heard 3 seconds ago. It’s much mellower and its lyrics are not nearly as frivolous as its predecessor’s. The line ‘I’m lying on the carpet, baby/looking like a pile of bones’ tends to stay in your head, probably because of its partnership with the slow yet sticky guitar and drumbeat. Singer Jimmy Monaghan’s voice bears an ever so slight resemblance to Brian Molko’s, only more agreeable.
‘Pill, Oh’ sounds like a lullaby and with all this talk of falling asleep into the deep and being asked to come with him, it is perfect to drowse to. Just make sure you don’t have the album on shuffle in case Track 1 comes on next. ‘The Sex’ – is an attractive, melodic number while ‘To Grow Up Wet’ accounts for the ‘acoustic’ tag. As for experimental, that’s catered to by the last track which features the sinister opening monologue advising us to head to the country or the sea so as to avoid certain death.
“And Then It Rained For Seven Days sounds raw, nearly amateurish – it wasn’t recorded professionally so it doesn’t have any polish or gloss. It’s just a couple of blokes making music wherever they can. It’s refreshing and natural, for sure. But do they have the potential to make it big? That’s hard to say – they are definitely good at being versatile, but instead of reflecting other bands, perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea if they developed a sound of their own.
Music For Dead Birds
For the people out there who don’t know you can you give us a little background on the band?
We’re just about two years old now. When we met we were both playing in different bands that would play gigs together. We were friends and we both had the same frame of mind musically so whenever we would mess around with instruments it usually worked.
The original idea behind the whole thing was to have it as a bedroom-recording project. We never really had any intention of playing live. But then when we started playing to people we realized how much of a rush you get. That rush is kind of what’s been motivating us so far.
We never really expected for people to like our music, So everything that’s happened for us so far has been a pleasant surprise!
The name of the band really sticks out any history behind the name?
The day after we recorded and wrote our first song we went into the city to buy some proper microphones so we could record a better version of it again. On the way in we cam across a dead pigeon lying on an electrical box. It was such an odd thing to see so we took a picture. We didn’t really think anything of it at the time. Then after the song was recorded we decided to set up a myspace account. I uploaded the picture of the dead bird and came up with the name “Dead bird music”. A few days later we decided “Music for dead birds” sounded better.
“Cathedrals” is a tough record to label. How would you explain to a prospective listener?
Its kind of Erratic. It never really stays in the same place for too long. Each song has its own back round story and meaning, I wont go into them now, but it makes them all different. They were all recorded in different places aswell which I think set them apart from each other even more. There is actually a cryptic story behind the whole cd. It’s about a horse that gets reincarnated as a teenage boy.
How are the songs written in the band? Each song seems to represent a different type of style.
It depends. We could both write a piece of music and show it to one another, and then work on it together. Or else we could just press record and play the first thing that comes out. I think we’re pretty vague about styles, anything goes.
Who are you listening to right now? Anything up and coming we should be looking for besides yourselves of course?
We feel honored to be part of such a booming music scene in Ireland right now. It rocks! We’ve had the pleasure of meeting and playing with some really inspirational people. Some bands you should definitely keep an eye out for are The Depravations, Mirakil Whip, So Cow, Giveamanakick, The Brno Chairs, Vertigo Smyth. There’s so much more, just look at our friends list on myspace!
Could we see any more new material this year? We would love more over here.
Thanks! Hopefully an album will be emerging at the end of this year. Nothing definite yet though, once we get the right collection of songs that were happy to call an “album” we’ll go for. Until then writing is the main priority.
By John Siwicki