Terror Bird on Night School Records

Got another one in today from UK's Night School Records, who put out that great Divorce single, this one is from Terror Bird, who I first heard on Atelier Ciseaux/La Station Radar, and the Vancouver 3 piece, (or now married duo?) offers up a couple more dark, minimal pop tracks with Nikki's great vocals, the matte ink screened sleeve is really nice and these all come in super thick heavyweight mylar outer sleeves, a nice touch for this kind of handmade object.
The A-Side's "Outside" manages as Terror Bird does to make this haunting distant sound attractively poppy. It's a little bit deceptive, drawing you in combining Nikki's soulful vocal against the cold machine instrumentation. Like the most successful bands in the genre there's no attempt to cover up the source sounds, the percussion is obviously thin and manufactured, reveling in it's inability to emulate the real thing. The keyboard synth sounds are direct line in and slightly in the red, with a subtle layer of distortion covering everything. What really gives the tracks their unmistakable humanity and feeling is Nikki's breathy vocal. Like Zola Jesus, it's unmistakably unique, she's just one of those people born with a great voice and natural phrasing, layered over itself or far off buried over a telephone line, you're listening to a real control...it makes me want to go back and dig out old Siouxsie albums. She's delivering her lyric in a loose, laid back way, under a heavy delay, never struggling or competing with the rest of their sound, it's as much atmospheric as the overdriven synth. As much for me as it's about the vocal, it also feels like it's trying to hide in the shadows, to stay away from getting too optimistic. It's a dark ride that's settled in to the isolation, like there's no fight left.

The B-Side, "When I Woke Up" highlights an overwhelming repetition from a simple piano melody over live sounding drums this time that reinforces that trapped no-wave feeling further while Nikki really gets into a low register tortured soul. She instills all the feeling over both of these tracks, this one building into a more epic losing control sound. Insanely talented, with a clearly definitive unique sound right out of the gate.

Their full length is on Night People records...'night' labels.... that's no coincidence.

Go get this one from Night School, along with that Divorce single and count yourself lucky.

Debut UK 7" from Canadian Terror Bird. 2 tracks of luscious home-recorded DIY gloom pop of the most romantically forlorn quality. Limited to 300, Screen-printed sleeve, insert, stamped labels. Artwork by Gina Baber.

Divorce on Night School Records

No one creates a racket quite the way Divorce does, and they remind me of it every new single that comes my way. This one on Night School Records has a really thick screened heavy cardstock foldover, which was stuck on the inside to a heavy mylar, almost picture disk outer sleeve with a Divorce sticker....making this homemade as hell...a big tear line down one side of the printed sleeve, really great work in making this one stand out.

There was a time when bands like Lightning Bolt, Hella, SIDS and Diet Cola were all I wanted to listen to, at the time it sounded like the most forward looking, original direction for any genre to be attempting...I think if you follow this line of thought you get your Abe Vigoda and Mika Miko, combining that heavy rhythm hardcore noise into punk pop and when Divorce ended up on my radar a little while ago, it brought all that kind of early extremist stuff back for me.

I'm trying to think about what it is about this sound that doesn't get old and a lot of it is the live show so I suppose another branch of the Lightning Bolt tree is some of the glitch electronics stuff like, Dan Deacon in terms of how downright fun and original seeing a band live can be.

But back to Divorce, who all at once take a pure love of hyper rhythms, experimental guitar and Jennie's vocals which are surprisingly clear rising over the weird guitar screechings, the entire fretboard played high to low as a single note on A-Side's "Love Attack". Now that I'm hearing this back to back with yesterday's Aids Wolf, there is a pretty clear connection I never made, Jennie is also coming up with entirely new melody lines for her vocal, even given this solid foundation of pummeling tom beats and gestural distortion, she won't follow any sort of predetermined line, instead reminding me of The Coathangers or White Lung's unique, singing-spoken word style...the difference between Aids Wolf is there's still lyrics here, even if a lot of it is lost in this aggressive chaos, sometimes yelling, but the consistent hollow pop of the snare keeps it headbanging.

B-Side's "Meating" continues to step up the beat, they're really pushing themselves in marrying various strong rhythms together successfully. Jennie also has to be as strong and straightforward as Vickie's riffs and crazy timing drumming. There's nothing timid in any part of it's performance and creation. There's nothing like that combination of shaking tom and kick, single note low end bass and Vickie's growl. There's not much else to say. Someone get a kickstarter together or something to book them in NY. I selfishly want to see them break some ceiling tiles at Death By Audio.

You can order direct from Night School in the UK or head over to Deathbomb arc and add this to the pile of other quality recordings you're going to find there.