Night Birds – Fresh Kills Vol. 1 (Grave Mistake)
I’ll have to admit a bit of apprehension approaching this album, solely based on all the mentions I had read of Night Birds that described their sound as surf-punk. Now, there have been a few punk bands that took a little bit of Dick Dale and the Ventures and came up with some good results, but most of the time the whole surf thing comes off as kitschy and insincere. But like the better bands who could incorporate some of surf-rock’s driving twang in their punk songs – Agent Orange or Dead Kennedys in bygone days, Masshysteri more recently – Night Birds are able to use the sound more as one of several aesthetic tools at their disposal rather than placing it front and center as a glaring focal point.
Night Birds – Fresh Kills Vol. 1 (Grave Mistake)
I’ll have to admit a bit of apprehension approaching this album, solely based on all the mentions I had read of Night Birds that described their sound as surf-punk. Now, there have been a few punk bands that took a little bit of Dick Dale and the Ventures and came up with some good results, but most of the time the whole surf thing comes off as kitschy and insincere. But like the better bands who could incorporate some of surf-rock’s driving twang in their punk songs – Agent Orange or Dead Kennedys in bygone days, Masshysteri more recently – Night Birds are able to use the sound more as one of several aesthetic tools at their disposal rather than placing it front and center as a glaring focal point.
In fact, the only beach-related reference on the album comes with the first song, “Killer Waves,” which utilizes a combination of the dictionary and the colloquial definitions of the word “killer” to suggest both the devastating consequences of mankind’s impact on the environment and the narrator’s intention to surf the waves that will result from melting ice caps. It might seem like a tasteless piss-take on a pressing issue, but Night Birds balance a sense of irreverence with an awareness of the world’s more fucked up elements. Sometimes this is reflected in the lyrical elements, with songs like “Bad Biology” and “Thrilling Murder” that offer glimpses into violence and psychosis. But even when the lyrics go more directly for the jugular (with songs like “Paranoid Times,” “Can’t Get Clean,” or “Prognosis: Negative” dwelling on more damaged psychological elements), they’re juxtaposed with music that’s uptempo, catchy, and fun in a way seems inappropriate in all the right ways. Just hearing a singer whose style bears more than a passing resemblance to poet laureate of all things nerdy Milo Aukerman throw in lines like “Gonna seek you out / Gouge your eyes out / Through your throat and out your mouth” is disconcerting.
Despite some violent content, however, Night Birds aren’t a horror-punk band, not in the schlocky cartoonish sense at least. There has unfortunately been no shortage of bands who take the Misfits shtick and run with it, but its rare to see a band that can utilize a thorough understanding of real dread. How many face-painted Danzig clones (not to mention poppy surf-punk bands) would even think of using lines like “Charges against you will never be made formal / A blanket cause allows this sort of thing to be normal / We can torture and entrap anything perceived as a threat / A nation snugly kept in check by unfit minds in a cold sweat”? It’s very much to Night Birds’ credit that they can avoid didactic sloganeering when offering this sort of analysis of the end results of ideological excess – most bands would take a more direct, but ultimately less satisfying approach. Their ability to acknowledge the implications of seemingly faceless social and political forces that steer so many facets of modern existence helps prevent the band from falling into the trap of one-dimensionality–a trap not easily avoided.
Moments like those are an excellent example of the way that Night Birds can take familiar elements and shift their course – with only the slightest of alteration, components of their sound that at first seem familiar and inviting (a variety of musical sub-genres and their attendant expectations, the intersections of personal and political permutations of terror and degradation, etc.) take strange turns, cloaking the sound in what would seem like cognitive dissonance in hands less capable of crafting a memorable hook. A listener gets the impression that they’re fiddling as Rome burns, not necessarily condoning the less savory elements of their lyrics, but not necessarily condemning them either. Their sound may not be entirely without precedent, but with Fresh Kills, Night Birds demonstrate the extent to which they’re attuned to the elements that made punk rock compelling and troubling in the first place.
