I Fly by Birdbrain

Everybody likes a bit of tension now and then, and I Fly, the debut release from New York quartet Birdbrain, provides plenty. Consisting of just two saxophones, trombone and vocals, the group's music features spirited horn battles and a singer (Yvette Perez) who treats the notes The Wire of the standard diatonic scale as if they were merely rough guides to be tweaked as needed.

Obvious reference points for I Fly are The World Saxophone Quartet or Rova Saxophone Quartet, though Birdbrain are less selfconciously avant garde - more poppy, in fact. The ten songs here are short and savoury rather than sweet. They're epigrammatic mini-stories, like the haiku-ish "Sea Cow": "Sea cow/Swims in our tow/Sea cow/Kinda like you now/Oh, manatee in tow/Ahoy ahoy/Sea cow." Perez's breathless punk jazz vocalising, half spoken/half sung, owes much to No Wave. Time and again she almost hits the expected note but veers away at the last moment, twisting short of her presumed target.

With no rhythm section as such, Birdbrain's three horn players (Don Trubey on alto, Tim Noe on tenor, and downtown avant garde legend Peter Zummo on trombone) fill multiple roles. Most tracks feature pulsing pedal bass figures on alto sax, laying a foundation for rhythmically complex call and response duels between tenor and trombone. The horn interplay resolves from time to time into harmonic cadences that are surprisingly lush for such a small group. In its less restrained moments, the horn section almost evokes the crazed French jazz rock outfit Etron Fou Leloublan. At its punkiest, it comes close to the naive, atonal wailing of Lora Logic.

• Dave Mandl, THE WIRE •
Issue 251, January 2005

Not since Gilli Smyth fronted Gong or Dagmar Krause fronted Henry Cow have you heard a really great, genuinely femme avant-pop excursion. You can find soloists like Laurie Anderson and Meredith Monk. You can find Canadians like Jane Siberry, if you must. But a unit of measure - a trio like Cow or a massively manned assault like Gong's? One where often wordless, primal screams and holy tongue-speaking ripples of poking, babbling New York Pressvoices intermingle with toots and blorts and skronks without relying on guitars? That also manages musicality and melody? One where rhythms crazed and curly seem to play within messy, but somehow, innocently sweet arrangements? I think not.

That's why I've been so open to Birdbrain, a tri-state-based, guitar-and-bass-less avant-pop quintet whose billowing bangs and seedy reedy and brass displays play in the same yard, not only of Krause-n-Cow, but of Joan La Barbara and Kevin Ayers, free-floating free-music eccentrics both. Yet, there's accessibility to their sound that places the "pop" of avant-pop high upon things Birdbrain value most. With their minimalist soundscapes and playful vocals, Birdbrain have created for live audiences a twilight zone that's never dull or droll.

That could come from the fact that their instrumentalists have, at their command, the history of pedigree. Trombonist Peter Zummo has been aligned to late greats Arthur Russell and Steve Lacy. Percussionist Michael Evans has played with God Is My Co-Pilot and many a James Chance configuration. Saxophonists G. Don Trubey and Tim Noe were Dancing Cigarettes. Their flat, repetitious bloops and minor-key blorts, tied to the sounds of wind, ravens and rain, on "A Dream of Things" sets a stage for Perez to dance upon. Without her, they'd be boring. Without them, she'd be unhinged. Together they create an elegant cloud of careening, woozy woe as documented by their long EP, I Fly, and its best stabbing, darting multitracked vocals as through the free-jazz breaks of "Confection of Sound." Adorable and dangerous, Birdbrain are a must-watch for 2005.

• A.D. Amorosi, NEW YORK PRESS •
Volume 17, Number 49