BIRD – GIRL AND A CELLO
This album from Swedish blonde nightingale Bird (aka Janice Price) is what it says it is – a girl and a cello, doing some stuff. But it’s more than that, as Bird’s clever layers of pop instrumentation lend these songs a bit of a cosmopolitan twist. The real twist is that all of the sounds, percussion, strings and everything are seemingly created with her cello – plucked, bowed, hit, brushed and shaken. It’s not so easy to pick in the opening ballad Sweetheart, but the genius of this device quickly becomes apparent with Bad Connection, which utilises various corners of the instrument to conjure up all manner of thumps and clicks which coalesce into one disco shuffle. She’s quite clever at layering her own vocals too – her crepe-thin, deftly pitched voice lends itself well to European mega-pop harmonies, and thickens the sound of it all with pops and beat-box. A couple of cheeky Morrissey and Pixies covers and some more ethereal sounds towards the end round out the album well, but the grooves do bleed into one after a while. Still, this sparse little record is inventive, sweet and fun.
***1/2
