Tweak Bird Album Review
Tweak Bird – Tweak Bird
Words by Alex Brady
No it is not a Twitter application, Tweak Bird is the name of an American duo and their latest album, and album I have very mixed feelings about.
There are two stand-out points to their work. Firstly the guitars; heavy, hypnotic, full to the brim with bass and expertly played. Secondly the vocals; smooth, mysterious, alluring and reminiscent of MGMT and early The Who. On their own, each one works splendidly and is thoroughly worthy of the praise I have just imparted; but put them together and it all falls down like a badly played game of Jenga.
The best comparison I can find is to pork chops and gateau. Separately they are delicious, but eat them together and all you have is a recipe for a bad stomach and a restless night. That is the major trouble with this album. There are a couple of other points which let them down.
The intro to Round Tripping appears to be a muffled, faster version of the one used for Lights in Lines and once it does reach the point of distinguishing itself from the afore mentioned track, it’s nothing but a choppy, psychedelic mess which may well be what was intended for it, but it leaves you feeling it was a bit of a waste of time and painfully pointless. Continuing my rant regarding intros, the opening to The Sun sounded very much like a clone of 500 Miles, by The Proclaimers which in itself is not a bad thing, it just seems as though they recycle a lot of sounds.
The Sun did provide a ray of hope for the duo though. The subdued guitars matched their voices perfectly producing a relaxed and mellowed sound that was easy on the ears; until the saxophone made an appearance. From then on it became disjointed, awkward and quite out of place what the excellent first half of the song.
I really don’t know which way to go with this. When you look at the album as a whole, the good and the bad points pretty much balance each other out, but with some refinement and growth this could be a whole lot better. They have the potential, which is why I’ll give it 6/10 rather than an even 5.
