Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Combine the very best of every attraction, art form and moment that you spend locked in your head daydreaming of songs that would have thrilled the music hall, an English Operetta or the down and dirty night in the basement of a Soho club taking in the wine, whisky and the soda, mix them with a sense of the triumphant and the heavily costumed and the hedonistic swagger and the result still won’t be a touch on the gargantuan new album by Birdeatsbaby, Tanta Furia.
It is the overload, the huge amount of information that announces itself in a manner befitting the elegance of a high class function, the Master, or indeed Mistress of Ceremonies booms the names with passion, with the twinkle of vice and redemption bursting at the seams as each song is performed.
Brighton is arguably the most bohemian of destinations on the south coast of England, a town that would not be out of place if it shared a coast line with Scarborough or Whitby, Liverpool or Newcastle, yet somehow its proximity, its short train journey to the capital makes it a gathering place for all that is good, oddly beautiful and out of the ordinary; it is the most perfect place of residence in which a band like Birdseatbaby can flourish and overwhelm the extraordinary.
The extraordinary lives with such a beating heart that it never really becomes fashionable or outdated, it just sounds mind blowing, tempting, the epitome of the curious and the individual and if anything truly captures that then it is the make-up of Mishkin Fitzgerald’s vocals, Hana Maria’s eccentric and sublime violin and cello, Garry Mitchell’s guitar, Forbes Coleman’s synth and bass and the captivating double bass of Alfie Weedon as the meld together a set of songs that are indomitable and very special.
It is hard to call them songs, more like suns exploding in a far off Galaxy but the effects being felt here on Earth, but in the tracks Deathbed Confession, Bones Of God, In Spite Of You and Elliot, Birdseatbaby, the universe shudders at the cracks made in Time and space and it is a honour to be infected by the fallout.
Tanta Furia is not a diversion, it is not the only album that will feature highly in any decent top recordings of the year but it is one that has arguably the finest of personality embedded deep within its raging orchestral heart.
Ian D. Hall