Initially the brainchild of Seattle native David Lamb, BROWN BIRD really took flight when Lamb joined forces with Morganeve Swain and relocated to the band’s current city of residence: Providence, Rhode Island.
Since 2003, the duo have diligently created four studio albums (the most recent being 2009’s ‘The Devil Dances’) and toured constantly. Their fifth is due sometime before the curtain comes down on 2011, but to be going on with we have this impressive four-track EP, ‘The Sound of Ghosts.’
There are ancient and highly potent forces at work here. With its’ wandering hobo Folk-Blues sound, finger-picked guitar, souped-up upright bass, tambourine and busker-style kick drum, opening track ‘Ragged Old Town’ is eerie and intimate and its’ sepulchral lyrics (“don’t you hear the sound of ghosts comin’ from the grave?”) supply the EP’S chilling title.
Tracks two and three – the low-ridin’ ‘Bilgewater’ and the handclap-tastic ‘Rat Tail File’ – also eke out an especially virulent strain of Appalachian Folk to spread around. Both tunes have hints of arcane rural Americana practitioners like The Cave Singers and the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir, yet they have a vivid presence of their own and the results are always far more fulsome than the sum of the relatively skeletal sonic parts.
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And nowhere more so is this point demonstrated than on the closing ‘Cast No Shadow.’ Perhaps the pick of this melancholic crop, it has a rich, Eastern European feel with fiery gypsy fiddling, friction-burn chord changes and lyrics infused with spells cast and revenge served cold. It’s surely the cherry on the cake and as stylish a way to say goodbye as they come.
I must confess to having been piteously ignorant of this band previously, but if ‘The Sound of Ghosts’ is anything to go by, there’s a back catalogue here that’s going to require some searching out. This Brown Bird is an exotic species you’ll need to keep your binoculars trained on very carefully in future.
Listen to 'The Sound of Ghosts' at Bandcamp
Brown Bird online
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