Review Summary: With their debut four-track extended play, Birds of Tokyo give us a glimpse of what is to come… and then some.
The story of Birds of Tokyo is not an unusual one – the band formed in 2004 from a collaboration between members of another Perth act Tragic Delicate and Karnivool, from which lead singer Ian Kenny came. In mentioning him, one cannot help but describe the colossally talented vocal stylings of the charismatic frontman. While Kenny doesn’t possess the most unique voice the music world has ever seen, he has become renowned throughout the Australian scene for his technical prowess both live and in studio, and unlike the debut Karnivool effort, the Birds’ self-titled EP is no exception. The instrumental performances present on the album, courtesy of guitarist Adam Spark, then-bassist Anthony Jackson and drummer Adam Weston are as simple as ever, often revolving around two chords while Kenny carries the song.
‘Russian Roulette’ puts on show a vintage exercise in Alternative Rock, with a simplistic guitar pattern from Spark laying the foundation for some of Kenny’s finest vocal melodies to date. ‘Pedestal’ is perhaps the only track of the EP that isn’t really worth listening to, with its barely interesting instrumentation and an only slightly more interesting vocal performance. ‘Believer’ is a compelling track in itself, with another two-chord progression and simplistic bass and drums as the background for Kenny’s stellar melodies. The chorus will surely stick in the listener’s head, with Kenny singing ever so passionately ‘at the start of every dream, I fade in, I fade out,’ before carrying the song in a way it seems only he can do. ‘Believer’ fades out (pardon the pun) into what could only be the finest track of the record, and one of the best the band have ever done, which is simply ‘Untitled’. While closer to an early Karnivool than what the Birds have become today, it is an incredibly soaring yet desolate track, with one of Kenny’s most impassioned vocal performances alongside some unusually complex instrumentation from Spark, Jackson and Weston. The chorus exudes the higher notes of Kenny’s broad range, and the song progresses in an unconventional Roy Orbison sort of way, as opposed to the traditional verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus that the band has ever-so-enthusiastically abided by. The chorus is repeated twice before the song goes into a bombastic outro section, where the listener could swear that Kim Benzie of Dead Letter Circus had momentarily taken the reigns. It is a fantastically dynamic and compelling track that singlehandedly warrants the EP’s purchase.
Indeed, the self-titled extended play merely gives way to a poppy alternative sound further explored in Day One, a gap between which is bridged by the well worth hearing double A-side ‘One Way/Stay’. It is ultimately a glimpse of what is to come, with some good tracks that are not a far-cry away from their current work and are still performed live to date. While it could hardly be relevant to the average rock fan, it can be emphatically recommended to any fan of the band’s work from Day One to the self-titled full-length, and in that respect, it serves its purpose.
