•
Rating:
Using a review site to write a non-review seemed like a good idea to me.
Upon waking, a book by Pirandello stares at me from the bookshelf. Many masks, few faces, it said. I glance at the clock: it’s still too early to get up. Outside, it’s barely dawn, and I can only hear the alarm from some distant car. I turn, toss and turn, but there’s no way to fall back asleep. Thoughts start racing. I think of familiar faces. Those next to me, those I haven’t seen in too long, those I’ve forgotten, those I can’t forget. I think of faces I don’t know: I imagine them in others' stories, I idealize them in my own likeness. Every face is a bond. Every face is an event in my life. I reflect on my actions. Did I do well? Badly? Should I have acted differently? I chase away my anxiety with a sigh and realize how truly important those sincere faces are. It’s a tide that knows no end: intimate and shouted, fragile and tempestuous.
Fragile, yes. I believe I’ve found the word that perfectly identifies the music of Birds In Row. A fragility that, like a prism, reflects infinite nuances. I see fragility in the cover of “We Already Lost the World”. I stare at the photograph, and images from Walker Evans with his study on hands pass through my mind: it was 1929, it’s 2018, and for me, the meaning contained in two hands holding each other remains hypnotic. The tension of reaching out, trusting, reassuring each other, intertwining. There, like a pearl enclosed in a shell, lies hope for Birds In Row. Delicate as crystal. The world burns in a sea of ash, but there is still an anchor to cast to save oneself. Maybe. Fragility takes the form of a desperate and melancholic navigation, searching for a lighthouse to illuminate it. It’s the last echo of a battle cry, before sinking into the abyss.
"How to know you’re falling without a floor, walls or ceiling? It’s a comedy that chases no end."
Sinking, yes. There’s this scene in La Haine that I’ve loved since the first time I saw the film. The Eiffel Tower goes dark. Hubert tells Vinz the story of the guy falling from the 50-story building: “So far so good. So far so good. So far so good. The problem isn’t the fall, but the landing.” When the 34 minutes with “We Count So We Don’t Have to Listen” begin, it feels like starting from that 50th floor. The Birds In Row take us hand in hand to delve into the groove created by the fall. With an emotional viscosity that animates every fraction of a second on the platter. Everything appears blurred. We are about to plunge and are overwhelmed by the train of roads we could have taken. And here appears the hand of “We Already Lost the World”. A gesture of salvation, of love. A love towards the other, banishing a blind and solitary vision. That lives in human relationships, that wishes to live in society. That would like… to exist. The wild splinters of post-hardcore, screamo, and post-punk suddenly seem less painful.
Pain, yes. Love is a challenge, say the Birds In Row in “Love Is Political”, but the cataclysm of “Fossils” is the final burn, which seems to evaporate every form of life. “The sea runs dry, we lose hope” is the plaintive chant that closes “We Already Lost the World”, before a flood of guitar feedback silences everything and everyone. Is it a final awareness? Or is it a return to those thoughts that keep eyes wide open at night? It’s a dance that moves on barren ground, but Birds In Row, in this, wanted to show us the antidote. A great final dance to join:
“We run away from each other and stumble on the mirages of universal love. Love became a political statement. Speak up your mind but never forget to listen. We already lost the World, and it’s ours to take it back.”
Yes, take it back.
Loading comments slowly
