Issue 45

8
Bido Lito!
June 2014
Bird
A moon rising above a fragile lake; a sinister figure on a
A moon rising above a fragile lake; a sinister figure on a
black horse; drums in the deep, and a scream from somewhere
simultaneously callous and beautiful: all images evoked by the
suite of songs that forms My Fear And Me. At last, BIRD have
made good on the promise of recent years: their first album is, at
times, breathtaking.
“I’m running out of words to describe forests,” says Bird’s
vocalist, bassist and chief dreamer Adéle Emmas sheepishly, as
we bring up her obsession with the night. She’s sitting in the half-
darkness of Café Tabac, eyes glistening in an oval face that looks
profoundly, bafflingly spiritual, like a Pre-Raphaelite Madonna.
It’s not often you meet someone who immediately strikes you as
the full package, but here she is. Fantasy and idle talk often melt
into pragmatism during our conversation, a result of Bird’s quick
rise to the mainstream radar since
Bido Lito!
last caught up with
them almost 18 months ago. Back then the band was a three-
piece making decent pagan rock with
of greater aspirations. Adéle’s
the centre of Bird’s gravity, has
lost none of its melodrama;
bidolito.co.uk
glimmers
voice, still
Once Christian was recruited, the group jammed – sorry,
practised loudly – in Lex’s mum’s house to the likely disdain of her
neighbours. Christian’s outsider perspective on bits and pieces of
songs Adéle had kept back for a while was invaluable to turning
those demos into the roaring finished products that form My Fear
And Me, Bird’s debut on Baltic Records, an assured collection
that thrums with spectral energy. Listening to it is an intense
experience – it’s at times claustrophobic, taut and slyly inventive,
unafraid to pursue truly cinematic imagery.
I Am The Mountain
and
Sea Of Trees
delve into an endless well of atmosphere and
textures, with the odd time change or sound effect dropped in
here and there to further muddle the mood.
Blue, in particular,
has a striking opening passage: a radio message from someone
lost at sea, overheard on the boat of a family friend Adéle went
sailing with one day. “It was probably really bad of me, but I
thought ‘this would sound amazing on the album’, like an SOS at
the end.” She shrugs. “So I recorded it.” As well she did, because
those sixty seconds are amazingly evocative, teased out over a
piano and advancing footsteps.
Of course, Bird have always had a fondness for escapism. They
what has changed, however,
admit to “creating a world for people
is the ferocious
to dip into”, yet acknowledge they
and, at times,
downright
heavy
musical
are in some way
the worlds of
interpreting
storm
that
now sweeps
at her back.
Forget the gentle
waves of the past,
this feels like a coming
cyclone, one that the rest
of the country is starting
to notice.
“We felt we’d taken
it as far as it could go.
There were lots of songs
that needed another pair
of hands, so we started
advertising for people.”
Adéle, Sian Williams
and Lex Samata were
certain that a bunch of
demos they produced
last year pointed to a
more expansive sound
than previous EPs Shadows
and Ophelia could contain,
as they went through various
potential members who let other
commitments get in the way of
ideas on the edge of fruition.
Enter Christian Sandford, an easy-
Words: Joshua Potts / @joshpjpotts
going 27-year-old impressed
Photography: GLORYBOX / glory-box.co.uk
by the band’s professionalism after a others.
chat in Leaf. “Adéle and Sian were sat in high back chairs, with a I’m talking
here
clipboard,” he recalls before Adéle nixes the clipboard part, putting about the romanticism and symbols of
an end to a mental image of Dragons’ Den-style interrogation.
She is adamant they had to be careful though: “It’s two or three
months of your life gone for people to fuck you off. We were
asking things like, ‘Are you sure you can fit this into whatever else
you’ve got going on?’ Of course, we’d invite people for a jam too.”
She catches herself at “jam”, a term that drummer Lex apparently
can’t stand; he isn’t here today, so I’ll take her word for it.
deathly transcendence My Fear And Me obsesses over, bringing
to mind the novels of the Brontë sisters, Wordsworth, Shelley,
and numerous touchstones of high Gothic literature. Again and
again the album confronts us with a yearning for annihilation,
the feminine apocalypse spread thin under starlight and the ash
of falling trees. That half of the studio sessions were scrapped
and churned to a darker hue comes as no surprise. It’s what
Christian calls the “big and meaty” side of the group, eternally
in conflict with poppier preoccupations, although I try to argue
it already feels like some common ground has been reached.
Are they scared of the urban influence that increasing touring
demands will press upon their rural soul? “It’s possible we’ve
gotten slightly more industrial,” explains Adéle, “but all the stuff
about nature is still there. We’ve definitely changed. When I listen
to the album now, I get a picture of run-down, broken, urbanised
England. It’s very much a personal thing. Can you see where I’m
coming from? Probably not, because I live in my own head half
the time.”
Bird are by no means political; what they manage to conjure
is a scrapbook of desires pulling in different directions. 2014
has been a seminal year in their evolution, seeing them gain
nationwide exposure from playing the BBC 6 Music Festival, and
further opportunities off the back of supporting Rodriquez during
his European tour. Lauren Laverne is now a fan, as is Rodriquez’s
grandson, a “fat kid who loves being fat”, prone to getting
his head stuck in lampshades to the amusement of others.
Conceptually, the band are broadening their horizons too. The
video for The Rain Song merely shows Adéle getting drenched
in an ungodly amount of water, her upper body resplendent
with rivulets of
running makeup. The
idea
was to start with
something
immaculate
and then ruin
it, or as the
accommodating
Miss Emmas
herself
points
out,
expose “the
other shit that’s
always going on
beneath our exteriors.”
Colour projections made
it into the initial take
but, rather like those
distressed
landscapes
Bird are drawn back to
time after time, it ended
up in black and white.
So, what’s with the
album title, what are
they afraid of? “Dead
birds,” is Christian’s
answer, prompting a
discussion on the perils of
a pigeon-racing grandfather.
Adéle is more succinct: “Fears
and anxieties are universal.
Finding who you are and being
OK with that. Bad leading to
good. I don’t want to put us
across as too much of a heavy band . . .”
That
shouldn’t be an anxiety to have
at this stage in their career. For all their mysticisms, Bird are
genuinely confident and focused enough to make a bid for
stardom. There is a light building at the end of the darkness. The
good is winning.
My Fear And Me is out now on Baltic Records.
soundcloud.com/birdofficial