Back in June we shared ‘Wednesday’s Child’, the new single from Buffalo, New York folk rock outfit Tough Old Bird, which saw founding brothers Matthew and Nathan Corrigan joined by Ricky Bechard (drums) and Brendan O’Shea (bass). “Their first as a four-piece, and thus newly detailed and rich, the kind of sound that every prior release from the Corrigans seems to have been building towards,” we wrote of the single. “Another stellar entry in this year’s bumper crop of electrically charged country rock, standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Thomas Dollbaum, Sluice and Brown Horse.”
The track was just the first of what promises to be a steady stream throughout the summer, and now Tough Old Bird have returned with its successor, ‘Shape of Our Love’. Continuing to display the newly electrified version of the project, the track sees the Corrigans and co. straddle the traditional and the contemporary, maintaining the narrative and emotional heft of classic folk while always striding forwards. With a central protagonist reflecting on their life, the mood is at once poignant and affirming, seeming to possess the kind of wisdom only earned through a life well lived yet in no way insulated from the raw tenderness such existence brings. “I brought a few things from my real life into this song—the moment I met my wife, the old house we live in and the little traces of everyone who inhabited the space before us,” Nathan Corrigan explains. “I think the character in the song is looking back over their life without judgment. It’s as if you could speak to the people who live in your house after you’re gone and say, ‘this is what I did and didn’t accomplish, here’s what I thought was important at the time.’”
When I occasionally ventured out
I would tend to avoid the crowds
Mostly sat and watched the clouds floating above
The first time her eyes met mine
I was lifted out of space and time
Try as I may, I could not define the shape of our love