Singles + EPs

EP Review: Birdpen

[Album: Breaking Precedent]
[Label: Les Oreilles Bleues]

What’s immediately clear from the moment you press “play” is Birdpen’s obsessive fascination concerning birds, and other examples of Mother Nature’s offspring. Their press release reads as if David Attenborough has begun his own science fiction writing career - penning nonsense phrases at a rate faster than an over-excitable teenage boy on his first venture into bumping uglies. One particular favourite was “We are shitting in our own bed and we’re not really enjoying the smell” - a beautifully coined phrase to represent how Birdpen are looking in from the outside, and are about to heal the world with their brand of radio-friendly rock.

But away from the ludicrously overreaching statements of the PR crew, do Birdpen really back any of this up with their music? The title-track opens with a simple drum loop and quickly gets to its point with a vocal line that evolves into something painfully similar to early Coldplay, just managing to restrain itself before it ends up breaking out into the chorus of ‘God Put a Smile on Your Face’. It’s such a blatant attempt at radio-play, screaming “love me” from every pore, that it immediately bores.

I was all about ready to write them off after the over-inflated PR cries and the tedium of their title track, but ‘Machines Like Ordinary People’ with its fairly dark, almost industrial groove that bursts out with electronic screams, genuinely impressed with its more sinister outlook that sounded more akin to the likes of dEUS than anything else. The track also gives the vocals a chance to develop their own sound instead of sounding like a cardboard cut-out of that wanker from Coldplay. It’s a shame the song peters out into a series of random noises once the band run out of ideas, but it’s certainly the best showing on this EP.

‘Man the Thinker’ opens with a swirling piano loop that is joined by fast, pacy vocals that proves that, whilst the material the band chooses to sing about isn’t that original (clear allusions to 9/11, and the impending doom of an Orwellian future), they still have a lot to say without resorting to tired similes or metaphors. There’s also a really subtle brass part working underneath the texture of the track that gives it a sense of quiet, patient uprising, and shows a promising ability to layer instruments. Unfortunately, it’s another case of road to nowhere as the track dwindles out, but it’s another fairly positive sign of solid songwriting.

The last track, save for the tacked on remix, ‘Implode and Fold’ will draw its harshest critics with the leading vocal line, that at this point sounds exactly like He Who Must Not Be Named. The vocal just seems to lack any of the emotion we’ve already heard earlier, making the track sound stale and boring. Apart from that, the backing instrumentation of glitchy, perhaps This Will Destroy You-influenced drums and trickling pianos only ever remain at the back, never really being given the chance to explore their abilities.

I suppose ‘Breaking Precedent’ isn’t too bad, showcasing a good talent for concise and sensible songwriting, and all the members are certainly in no way terrible musicians. However, when you have the pretentiousness to say that you don’t come from anywhere but “The Village” it’s incredible to think how dull and by-the-numbers this EP is. A few momentary sparks of interesting ideas that, if the band can focus on them, will make Birdpen a much more interesting prospect in the future.

For Fans Of: Coldplay, dEUS, Archive

Band Link:
Birdpen

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