Customer Reviews

Looks at the Bird

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Robert Young of Junkmedia, you have absolutely got to be kidding me.

1.) Please stop writing as though your audience is a bunch of idiots. Won't you please put down your pen before it leaks "I'm full of myself" all over your review?

2.) This is a great album, and Brokeback puts on a great show. A worthy album does not have to be "exciting" or fulfill your definition of "new." What about the idea of creating an album that's a good, solid listen . . . with melodies, intermingling sounds, and little lines that make you want to pop in "Looks At the Bird" every night after work for several weeks straight? It seems in this band you're looking for the wrong thing and have set yourself up for disappointment.

Once upon a time
there was a pretty fly.
He had a pretty wife
this pretty fly.
But one day she flew away...
flew away.

Mary Hansen, one half of Stereolab's vocal harmony, sang the above lines for the last song of Brokeback's new album, Looks at Two Birds. The album was recorded between December 2001 and May 2002 -- before Mary Hansen was struck by a car and killed while riding her bike in London in December 2002. It's an eerie, perhaps overshadowing, way to end a record, but there's no way anybody could have known things were going to be like this. Her voice punctuates the album: But one day she flew away.../ flew away.

Douglas McCombs began Brokeback as a solo project, a venue for him to explore different possibilities of the bass guitar, in 1999. Over three releases, Brokeback has evolved into a loose-knit collective of semi-regular contributors and supporting artists that reads like a "who's who" of post-rock. With the continual addition of musicians has come a refinement in sound. Once abstract and shifting, Brokeback now seems more focused on structure than texture. Looks at Two Birds is the most straightforward, and, in turn, accessible Brokeback album.

Accessibility, however, does not always translate to interest. While the structured nature of Looks at Two Birds is likely to hold your attention longer than the static and hum of Brokeback's last release, Morse Code in the Modern Age, the lack of challenge often detracts from the fulfillment that comes with a difficult listen. Much of Looks at Two Birds just glides by, often under the radar of attention, in an antiseptic haze.

Ironically, Brokeback's latest cast of characters have, one would hope inadvertently, pushed the group's sound dangerously close to the patented sound of McCombs' claim to fame: Tortoise. Although Brokeback has always had two bass guitars -- providing rhythm, texture and melody -- at its core, the tones were traditionally soft, round and devoid of twang. But on Looks at Two Birds, the bass takes on the wiry, Morricone tones of the Kings of Post-Rock. In a strange twist, Brokeback even covers a Tortoise song, "The Suspension Bridge at Iguazu Falls," here, providing an interesting (derived mainly from context), if faithful, interpretation.

So what it boils down to is this: Looks at Two Birds is a really good album; it's fun to listen to and the musicians have all proven themselves many times over on countless recordings. The standout track, "Name's Winston, Friends Call Me James," is a summary of everything that's so great about post-rock and the Chicago scene that championed the cause. Mary Hansen and her Stereolab partner, Laetitia Sadier, provide the la-la-las; drummer Chad Taylor anchors the ethereal vocals with one of his fluid rhythms, referencing bosa nova and free jazz and everything in between. Noel Kupersmith trods along on the double bass, while McCombs plucks out the high-end twang on an electric bass. And, as is the post-rock way, the editing is where the magic happens. The vocal harmony is mixed in with sweeps of sound, making it hard to discern where the voice begins and the synthetic sound begins.

Which brings us to the album's downfall: how many times can we be expected to buy the same sound? The feeling down here on the street is that post-rock might be on its way out, and the "heard-it-before" feeling that infiltrates this release doesn't provide a good argument to the contrary. It seems the vault of ideas has been ransacked, the collaborators all used up and out of new ideas. Nothing on Looks at Two Birds feels new or exciting, and that just adds further sorrow to the sad circumstances of this release. Rest in peace, Mary Hansen.

Robert Young
Junkmedia Review