Written by: Dave Cantrell

When the first thing that happens passed hitting ‘play’ is hearing the specter of prime Roger McGuinn-era Byrds rearing up with a sort of roaring jangle inside an immediately brilliant progression that carries with it something of a jet plane pop propulsion, well, believe you me, no matter how repeatedly they’ve been coated in cyncism over the years your ears are gonna sit up and take notice, alert as they all of a sudden are to exactly that aesthetic that, while not entirely missing from ‘the scene,’ has seldom and quite possibly never sounded quite this full, this profound, this naturalistically there. And that’s just the first twenty seconds, and though  the nurtured-by-experience skeptic in any of us might wonder if this newly-reassembled ensemble is capable of sustaining that ‘thereness’ across all thirty-eight minutes of this third full-length (self-titled debut appeared in 2020, follow-up Misplaced Words a year later), set that wonder aside and instead take up that ‘W’ word’s more aspirational definition and prepare yourself to run with it because, truly, even as the phrase is most often uttered with a note of dry sarcasm, on Bowerbirds and Blue Things, the wonders truly never cease. The fact that the opening track, as fate and luck and coincidence would apparently have it, is entitled “Sit and Wonder,” tells this writer/listener/instant fan all he needs to know regarding the meaning of being in the right place at the right time.

That serendipitous sense, it possibly goes without saying, maintains its momentum throughout, from the next-up “Frustration Can Cause Accidents” that bumps up the tempo via a pumping canyon-deep rhythmic groove that by rights should draw every punter that hears it out on to the dance floor even if it’s just the kitchen or bedroom or wherever, to final cut “Look Alive!” that handily manages the primary duty of any last track which is to leave the listener wanting more. Between those two we get the unbeatably-named “Bubblegum Nothingness” that fulfills its remit with a workmanlike insistence that simply does not give up; “The Relativity of Wrong” (with the Fall’s Eleni Poulou providing sing/talk vocals) that rises up like soe massive magical force born in a basement but now roaming the land and gathering followers everywhere it goes and, y’see, here’s the thing: Everything on this subtle stunner of an album merits such a response. “Bonanza 2 Tango Sierra,” immediately following, stirs a Teenage Fanclub jangle into a rhythmic stewpot labeled ‘Breeders meet Th’ Faith Healers in the Pastels’ basement’ (high praise around here, I can assure you) and to be honest that’s a fairly accurate approximation of the album entire.

“Birdland ’74” (song title of the week?), coming in all boldly undertoned like the world’s subtlest blunderbuss set on ‘melodious stun,’ proceeds to prove itself one of the year’s head-noddingest gems no matter what comes down the pick henceforth and so it goes through the dream-laden “Bad Comma Earth Connection,” “Captain Palisades”‘ sugar/adrenaline rush to penultimate track “3am” that’s as seductive as anything on this record and, yes, that’s sayin’ somethin’ but also not surprising, given what’s come before.

For this new fan, what all this means is going back to those first two albums but whether this band is new to you as well or you’ve been a fan from day one, Bowerbirds and Blue Things is, to put it plainly, simply a must-have.