Back in July of 2019, we wrote about A Garden Everywhere You Go, an album by Philadelphia-based brothers Nick and Chris Gandolfo-Lucia and childhood friend Samuel Shopp under the name Birdspotter. Released via Z Tapes, the record was an examination of everyday life, using earnestness and curiosity to push beyond the face of things. The resulting sound was humble but quietly complex, an album of discovery and learning. As we concluded:
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.
This month sees Birdspotter return with Gusty, a brand new full-length record again to be released with Z Tapes. Joined by drummer Braeden Reinoso, the band continue to develop the sound that emerged on A Garden, pushing into a newly realised and varied style to continue their growth. The evolution is clear from opener ‘Peaceful Man’, a song of melancholic yearning that retains the curiosity of the past album but finds darker and more threatening sights in the process. For the personal struggle and changes of direction take place within a confusing and hostile world, a backdrop against which one must try to do right. “And I start thinking to myself,” Gandolfo-Lucia sings, “Is there a point in this suffering? Am I just acting out my conditioning?”
Driving Fargo to Michigan.
Counting streetlights at dawnWhen I see two men fighting to death on the shoulder of the interstate.
Goddammit I’m a peaceful man
But goddamn I gotta do what I can
There’s a juxtaposition of wonder and pessimism on ‘Water’ too, the rich and warm sound balanced by a sense of things crumbling. How can the powers that be—America, God—be capable of such good and such bad simultaneously? This mystery hovers over the record, from the sweeping electronics of instrumental ‘You Can Smile Again’ to the sincerely conflicted ‘Return’. “Well anything can happen,” Gandolfo-Lucia sings, and truly means it. From lost loves returning to environmental collapse.
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‘Hey at the Party’ returns to the sad romance familiar to the genre, and Birdspotter commit to it earnestly, but it is difficult to shake the uncertainty introduced earlier on the record. There might be comfort in the warmth of others for now, the half-drunk wonder of a shared dawn, but there is no final answer there. The idea that anything can happen used to be a positive idea, the space of dreams coming true, but now even cherished moments are shadowed by the future, for with every dream sits a nightmare in wait.
Gusty is out now via Z Tapes and you can buy it now from the Birdspotter Bandcamp page, including on limited edition cassette.