Birding by deary

When deary, the dreampop three-piece composed of Ben Easton (guitar), Dottie Cockram (vocals, guitar) and Harry Catchpole (drums), named their debut album Birding, it wasn’t just as an homage to our feathered friends, they were referencing the sense of expansion, wonder, and abandon their music evokes. They chose the title to draw attention to the direct impact humans have on the world around us, whether that be nature, or ourselves.

“I got really into reading about birds and all these historical stories and poetry about them,” says singer/guitarist Dottie. “You find these beautiful images of birds that represent hope, but they're also animals. Some of them, like vultures and crows, are a sign of death to some people. They represent all these different elements, which I think sum up a lot of the album.”

“The album is all about human consequences,” explains Ben. “Consequences on each other, our own minds, on mental health, on nature. One idea that was quite tangible to us is the idea that humans have the biggest consequences on innocent, vulnerable, sentient beings, like birds, for example. It goes with the vulnerability of our inner selves, or the child in us, which pairs with the album art—a kid trying to fly. It's very ethereal, but it also has a lot of sad undertones to it as well.”

deary (all lowercase) came to be during COVID lockdown, with Ben leaving the southeast London scene he had been a part of and challenging himself to write more emotional, introspective music. A mutual friend recommended Dottie in 2021, and the pair quickly bonded over a shared love of Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, and MBV.

Dottie recalls that the first artist they discussed on meeting was Elizabeth Fraser, the enigmatic singer of the Cocteau Twins—and while the band have garnered quite few comparisons to the Cocteaus over time, what with Dottie’s angelic vocals, Ben’s layered guitar melodies awash in reverb, and Harry’s gargantuan drumming style, they’ve developed a style that draws from a wide breadth of influences while remaining completely their own.

While deary self-produced their debut EP Fairground in 2023, Birding is the first time they’ve produced their own music since, taking on the task with their longtime collaborator Iggy B. When the band were recording the album, Ben was coming off of a period of working as a freelance mixing engineer and producer. Having acquired the skillset needed to produce deary’s own records, the band decided that Birding would be a collaborative effort from beginning to end.

“I think with any artist, your first EPs are the first steps into what your sound is going to eventually become,” says Dottie. “With the album, we've grown up so much. Harry joined last year, and we’re a little bit of a family now, and we really understand each other. I remember us being in the studio, we were looking through some demos for this record, and I turned to Ben, and said, ‘I think we actually need to decide what we want deary to sound like and not follow these roadmaps. We need to think a bit more decisively about these songs and be really sure that we know where we want them to go.’”

“Our last EP was us trying to be deary,” says Ben, “and this album is us being deary.”

dreampop from london

Instagram
linktr.ee