Virgin of the Birds – Banquet Years
There’s almost a jazzy kind of ballroom shuffle to this record, the latest in a series of freely downloadable EPs from Seattle’s Virgin of the Birds. I don’t quite know what I mean by that, but it’s the best way I can think to describe the pace and feel of Banquet Years.
I can almost picture Jon Rooney singing this stuff in a near-empty working men’s club which hadn’t been redecorated since 1972, dressed in a white tuxedo with a cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth. Again, don’t ask me why, it’s just an impression.
It is indie music though, in the most generic (and hence borderline meaningless) sense of the term, but the laid-back basslines and shaky egg give the music a very louche feel, while the piano played like raindrops brings a little mystery, like the occasional glint of reflection from a badly-lit glitterball.
This series of EPs is an odd one, in the sense that they all retain their own identity, whilst still coming across as a single body of work. It’s almost like they’re chapters in the same story, because whilst you could easily transplant any song from any EP to another without breaking anything, the way they are arranged definitely has the feeling of being the right way to do it.
Jon was a little despondent, when he played our New Year’s party (see video below), about the prospect of being able to sell enough records for it to be worth even making them, which is one of the reasons why these EPs are all free. Personally, though, I think it’s a bit of a travesty in all truth, because these knock seven shades of shit out of a lot of stuff I’ve happily paid full whack for in the past and would happily pay for again. Sometimes all the free this and free that in the internet age saddens me a little, because it seems to force artists into the position where they end up feeling they have to accept that that is all that their work is worth, which is blatantly not the case, particularly not here.
Virgin of the Birds – She’s in the Moon Again
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Website | More mp3s | Download for free from Abandoned Love Records
If he was to charge for his next EP I’d happily pay for it. Maybe he should do something where its still free but you can pay for it if you want. (Like Radiohead did).
I’d happily give him £5 or £10 just because that’s the kind of nice cunt I am.
I haven’t been able to stop listening to this since I downloaded it.
She’s In The Moon Again is probably my favourite track of Jon’s since Ilona, and the jaunty rock n’ roll of Let Me Be Your Bride is one of the most whimsical, almost cheerful songs I’ve heard of his so far..
And the lyrics right through the EP are, as ever, entrancing.
Agreed, although I’d also put Lessons Learned in Turkish Valleys right up there as well.
I would also happily fork over my hard earned weekly pitance for this stuff. And would do it retrospectively even though I just downloaded them for free.
Is it wildly pretentious to say this sounds intelligent. The words, and the instrumentation just sound very thoughtful Blah, that makes no sense but I’m standing by it.
This stuff is fantastic.
And it’s true. Americans really really hate the ‘c’ word. Makes the twitch!
CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT!
And minge.
That was not intelligent. But I still enjoyed it.
But I do agree with you about the general point of this coming over as very thoughtful, clever music. Not in an ostentatious, look at how clever I am sort of a way, but in a really well-judged and economically executed sort of way.
My response tends to be “I know it’s a horrible word, and offensive. That is why I only use it on horrible offensive little cunts”.
Yes. What you second paragraph said.
Well surely that’s the whole point. Of course it’s offensive – why would I use an inoffensive word when I am specifically trying to fucking offend you?
Yeah, you flannel!
Thanks for the nice words everyone (with the exception of the “c” word of course, which continues to frighten me). And Matthew, as I drunkenly stumbled from your party on New Years I began to regret my diatribe about the state of music and my inability to sell CDs. I was being a whiny jerk – please allow me take another shot. Advances in technology have been fantastic for music, and I’ll gladly accept the trade-off of the loss of physical sales for the fact that I have now recorded and “released” 3 EPs worth of music enirely with a home computer and a couple of hundred bucks of equiptment. Every note of every instrument was played by my oafish hands (thanks MIDI!). Then, I was able to put up a few files on a website for zero marginal cost and nice people like yourselves can check out my noisy rambling if you so choose.
5 years ago, my old band Morning Spy recorded our last album entirely to 2″ tape on amazing vintage gear at John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone studio in San Francisco. It was a great experience, it sounded wonderful but it was expensive as balls (relatively), we had a short time to track and mix 10 songs (6 days in total I believe) and everything required professional engineers to manipulate complex machinery. I have so much more freedom and opportunity to play dodgy guitar parts and ape my favorite records thanks to cheap, fairly easy to use digital recording technology. Who do I have to thank for this wonderfulness? Brian Eno? Bob Moog? That weird Neil Young record with the robot voices?