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 Nice Birds- Swirly
6/10

Swirly, the debut EP from Auckland trio Nice Birds is a trip back to the post-punk days of ’93, forwarded to 2010 where the band, fresh from high school, have formulated a grungy, rough around the edges sound. They’ve spent the past year as shy underdogs on the local Auckland punk scene; picked up by the Muzai label early on and nurtured, they’ve grown in confidence and ability. On Swirly some of that looseness still remains, they’ve never wanted to sound overly polished and it shows. ‘Lost In A Chinese Mine’, one of their earliest songs still has elements of their chaotic beginning, often floundering and tripping on its own untied shoelaces, it sounds a little messy and frayed at the seams. But averting further chaos, ‘Neon Shame’ and ‘F. Scott Fitzgerald Book Club’ both drip with post-punk griminess, full of shattering bass lines and piercing guitar riffs. They strike gold with their dark, frenetic noodling, journeying through a swampy peace induced underworld. Their barely legible lyrics form part of that notion to remain enigmatic, giving both songs a torturous mystic. Fifth and final track ‘Takapuna Tans’ opens and closes strongly but gets a little tangled up in the middle. The closing few bars finish the EP nicely, creeping like a spider, it leaps and ends abruptly as if capturing and killing its prey. The parts are all there and when they’re executed well Nice Birds sound like a solid post-punk band. Unfortunately at times they become bogged down, lost in a mist that turns their defining instrumental parts into one big clump of mud. Put it on vinyl though and it might tell a different story, it sounds made for the crackle and pop and the unpolished quality that you can only hear through a needle.
Nick

 

Posted by Nick Fulton under Album, Reviews
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