MP3: Bobby Birdman – “Only For A While”
After three years of tireless tinkering, Bobby Birdman is back.
On New Moods, his most focused and complete musical effort to date, upbeat pop anthems jostle up against shimmering slow a cappella numbers, while New Orleans bounce, dancehall, and hyphy funnel noisily into each self-produced pop number. Sun-drenched guitars and Bobby Birdman’s characteristic, unfuckwithable new-school croon wash over drumline weirdness and tyrannical sub bass, like a rogue wave on the Malibu beaches he frequently surfs.
New Moods is deconstructed pop-rock, but the melodies are so irresistible that they hook into a timeless, Van Dyke Parks-cum-Perry Como sound that’s as at home blasting out of a tape deck on your beach towel as it is in the club.
Born Robert Kieswetter, but dubbed “Bobby Birdman” by surf buddy Kyle Field (Little Wings), Kieswetter released several solo albums on Portland, OR-based indie labels before relocating to Los Angeles. No stranger to various LA art, music, and fashion scenes, Kieswetter has plied his talents composing music for visual artist Geoff McFetridge, and modeling for Band of Outsiders’ Fall 2008 line (with surfboard in hand, of course). He’s even remixed Young MC’s “Fastest Rhyme” for last year’s Delicious Vinyl anniversary release.
Bobby Birdman has toured with Will Oldham, Hot Chip, Joanna Newsom, YACHT, Dirty Projectors, White Rainbow, Little Wings and Lucky Dragons, and has graced venues as diverse as LA’s The Smell to the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The range of talent that Kieswetter hides beneath his unassuming fledgling moniker is just beginning to surge, and New Moods will crest the wave.
“Birdman has a smooth-as-butter voice and an uncanny knack for melody that separate him from the the experimental pop pack… [New Moods] is his strongest and most posititve work to date.” -Casey Jarmen (Willamete Week)
Bobby Birdman
New Moods
(Fryk Beat)
Street Date: Nov. 10, 2009
01 Only For A While
02 Dust Design
03 What You Say
04 Weighty Wait
05 Victory At Sea
06 Bloody Mess
07 Silent But Violent
08 You’d Be Surprised
09 Setting Sun
10 Truth Be Told
11 Well Sprung
12 Back and Forth
BOBBY BIRDMAN LINKS:
Label Page – frykbeat.com
MySpace – www.myspace.com/bobbbirdman