Birdspotter is the Philadelphia-based bedroom pop project of brothers Nick and Chris Gandolfo-Lucia. Hot on the heels of last year’s debut Aperture, Birdspotter have a new album, A Garden Everywhere You Go, which is out today on Z Tapes.
Written over the course of a year which saw the brothers drift away from the musical style that defined their adolescence, the record is built on acoustic guitar and narrative song structures, resulting in a collection of songs that the band say explore the “transcendental strangeness of our relations to the people in our lives.” As they describe:
“As songwriters, we were molting: we had moved away from the twinkly riffs and inconsolable lyrics that constituted our adolescence, but were still trying to find a sound that felt natural to us. We started writing on acoustic guitars, adopted narrative song structures, explored the transcendental strangeness of our relations to the people in our lives. Over the course of a year, this sensibility grew into a catalog of songs, which became A Garden Everywhere You Go.”
The delicate beginning of ‘Oracle’ highlights the new feel, the airy emotion rising into the acoustic bedroom pop of single ‘Daze’. With a gentle opening reminiscent of a Drunk With Love Records release, the track grows in complexity as it advances, conjuring its own atmosphere in a way that will appeal to fans of acts like Bellows. This balance between intricacy and plain sincerity is a common strand throughout the record, the humble focus of the songs—from cats in alleys to pennies in draws—lifted to greater significance by the bright sound. On A Garden Everywhere You Go, Birdspotter transcend the ordinary and lift the small details of life into high meaning.
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The modesty of lyrics extend to their substance too, with many of the tracks having no more than a few simple verses, and sometimes a lot less. Take ‘Red Rover’, which takes six lines and weaves an entire lived moment, or the even more succinct ‘Sunbathing in November’, a song that utilises three short lines, wringing every piece of feeling from eight simple words.
one window open
house a mess
nobody home
Which is not to say Birdspotter do not try their hand at painting a complete picture. As its title suggests, ‘Going on a Nice Walk’ is about strolling around a city with a loved one “when spring splits the winter open.” It has a wide-eyed sense of wonder, bright guitar pealing softly behind earnest vocals, the relatively verbose lyricism allowing the curious mood to flourish, which could be said to stand for the spirit of the record as a whole. “I am learning something,” Gandolfo-Lucia sings, “I am learning something good.”
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A Garden Everywhere You Go is out now via Z Tales and you can get it from the Birdspotter Bandcamp page.