Customer Reviews

Speckled Bird

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Speckled Bird was a departure from the normal sound of The Choir, not what you'd expect. But then, The Choir have a way of giving you what youd wouldn't expect. The opener is the title track, a spacy, haunting song of dying in Christ and rising to new life in Christ. From there the album moves from gritty, grungy songs like Wilderness to upbeat power ballads like Yellow Skies. The Choir again shows its oft-exposed soft underbelly with Love Your Mind, a personal favorite of mine among their repertoire and a greatly underappreciated song, and closes with Kissers and Killers, a rollicking alternative thrill ride of a song. Other notable cuts are Gripped, a song with a great, grinding rhythm guitar part, and Weather Girl. This particular album leans more toward the experimental side, but is a great album.

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Tracks:
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1. Speckled Bird
2. Yellow Skies
3. Like A Cloud
4. Gripped
5. Weather Girl
6. Wilderness
7. Never More True
8. Spring
9. Grace
10. Amazing
11. Love Your Mind
12. Kissers And Killers

Those are the first words that greet you on this 1994 release from veteran Christian alt-rockers The Choir, setting the tone for one of their most melancholy discs. This album is full of even more dense metaphor than usual..so much so that I'm at a loss to tell you what "Weather Girl" means even 11 years later. The sound is still full of distorted guitar layerings contrasted with the beautiful vocals of Derry Daugherty, Steve Hindalong's pounding backbeat, and Tim Chandler's bass with "Buckeye" Dan Michaels back on sax and lyricon for spice.

For the first time, strings are deployed (subtly) on a Choir album on the song "Like a Cloud".

HIGHLIGHTS:
"Gripped" is a portrait of the total hold love gets on your heart when it's for better or worse. ("She strangles joy with her eyes/She kills me so, she kills me so/She tangles misery with flowers/Her garden grows, her garden grows") "Weather Girl" is, I believe, about changeable women (maybe it's short for "Fair-weather" girl?). It warns you to "Never trust a weather girl/She grins when she warns you" over an appropriately menacing wall of melodic feedback. "Wilderness" examines the truism that even as believers we struggle with sin even now. ("Is your faith so right?/Are you so blessed?/Everybody wanders in the forest/Is your heart so true?/Are you so good?/Everybody wanders in the woods") Though it's a highlight, I prefer the "unplugged" version of this song featured on BROW BEAT (ASIN B000008PJU) to the amped up version here. "Grace" asks for forgiveness from those we've wronged. ("When you cut me in the alley-way/You don't have to turn that knife/I'll suffer in the afterlife")

LOWS:
"Spring" is probably my least favourite song here, not outright "bad" but a lesser lyric than I usually expect from the guys. The reminder that "love is alive in you" is closer to CCM cliche than the group usually gets.

BOTTOM LINE:
This is one of the Choir's most difficult listens. Much of it is more inaccessible than usual and it's a fairly somber album for a Christian band. It's still worthy listening, but it's probably one that won't come out as often as CHASE THE KANGAROO, DIAMONDS AND RAIN or WIDE EYED WONDER.