The Wooden Birds – Magnolia

The Wooden Birds

If I had to choose one word to describe Magnolia by The Wooden Birds, that word would be “pleasant”. There’s only one meal on the menu here, folks: softly muted acoustic guitars and half whispered melodies. If that’s your sort of thing, this is your sort of thing.

To describe one of the tracks on offer here is to, for better or worse, describe pretty much all of them. This isn’t necessarily to their discredit, however, as the lack of diversity on the record allows the band to turn their album into a cohesive and effective mood piece of sorts. Magnolia has the feel of a spontaneous, yet subdued, acoustic jam between friends on a sunny afternoon; the participants only dimly aware that they’re being recorded. To discuss the opening track ‘False Alarm’, then, seems a good a track as any to discuss. The song lays out all the cards The Wooden Birds are holding. Quite simply, what we have is a rich acoustic guitar lick looping over and over as the canvas for whimsical snatches of heavily repeated melody. Changes in textures are minimal and subtle; we’re talking of nothing more than the addition of barely noticeable percussion or a layer of female vocals – nothing entices this band out of its subdued and sleepy zone.

That said, just as repetition becomes something of a strength for The Wooden Birds on the scale of the full album, it’s also a strength within the narrower parameters of a single song. Each track’s repeated guitar progressions and vocal melodies don’t exactly become hypnotic so much as they do comforting.  These are songs that you’re able to hum along to when you’re hearing them for the first time; their easy familiarity inviting you to sit back, relax, pour yourself another drink, enjoy the sun… So strong is the sense of easy relaxation and comfort from this record that it sounds downright weird when they croon the heavily repeated refrain of “I hope you choke” on a track about halfway through the record.

This relentless adherence to a single aesthetic coupled with the band’s heavy reliance on repetition means that the record may not hold your full listening attention for its entire duration (wading through the final third of the record feels a bit like Groundhog Day if you’re giving the album your undivided attention). Nevertheless, I wouldn’t deter anyone from having Magnolia in their back pockets as the perfect record to whip out for various occasions during the summer. Granted, it’s pretty far away from being any sort of soundtrack to the sweltering, beer-fuelled barbeques of your summer afternoons. However, it’s infinitely more welcome as the gentle backdrop to lazy, hazy summer evenings when it’s still gorgeous outside despite being late and you decide to go finish the bottle of wine outside with someone nice. The Wooden Birds feel like almost custom made musical accompaniment for such occasions.

No related posts.