Album Details

• Artist: Bird By Snow
• Album: Songbread/another Ocean
• Label: Gnome Life
• Year of Release: 2008
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2008-12-25

Bird by Snow takes a trip on the spiritual side of alt-folk. These hopeful, searching tracks by guitarist/vocalist Fletcher Tucker blend wisdom, ignorance, psych, folk and Fahey, and are often as moving as they are poweful. At first you may not think the guitar work on "Songbread/Another Ocean" is that adeventurous, but deeper listening into the simple themes has quite a few rewards/

"Domestic Freedom" has a soaring soft-rock feel, with an edge totally missing from that genre.  "If You Wait" features a simple, insistent beat driven by drums and spare electric guitar line that sparse, but insistent guitarpresents itself more foecefully on "Caveman Baby"-lo-fi claustrophobic gem with chopping chord phrases, and on "You are Mom."

For variation, and to extend some developing themes, "Lovers on our Backs" adds a jarring piano, mingling with a hypnotic guitar phrase; the piano weaves in and out of this beautiful track, which also features backing vocals. Finally, "What I am Doing" a seven miute epic with hazy, distant vocals, like recorded from an opposite side of the room as the band is haunting, but becomes  more clear, like a resolution by its end. It is a driving, insistent tune evoking some sense of a lesson learned.

"Songbread/Another Ocean," with Tucker's guitar as bullhorn, is full of such confident but humble traces of understanding.

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