“I’m pretty excited about the positivity and heaviness of it,” says Tweak Bird’s drummer Ashton Bird about his band’s self-titled album, “Because we’re happy and we’re playing heavy music. And it doesn’t seem like people are doing that very much.”
Brothers, Ashton and Caleb Bird are the Southern Illinois-based duo, Tweak Bird, who after making a serious musical dent at last year’s All Tomorrow Parties “The Nightmare Before Christmas” in the UK, supporting Big Business’ spring tour and being invited to open for TOOL this past summer, are set to release their first proper full length album in August.
Produced by regular collaborators Deaf Nephews (Dale Crover from the Melvins and Toshi Kasai from Big Business), Tweak Bird’s new album is simply titled Tweak Bird. Driven by big drums, fuzzed out baritone guitar and tandem spacey vocal melodies, the album is a swirl of catchy and raw stoner-pop bits that are spliced, blended and expanded upon with unique sections of instrumentation. But don't expect any lengthy progressive jams with Tweak Bird; they make quick work of their arrangements, ‘Beyond’, Ashton’s favorite song, clocks in at just two minutes, “We have short attention spans and big ideas,” laughs Ashton, “We like to get our jobs done.”
“For the last year we were touring, and it was inspired by moving round a lot,” concedes Caleb when asked about what their inspiration was behind the album. Another influence is less obvious. “I was listening to a lot of T Rex,” he confesses, “I love Marc Bolan’s songwriting technique-pretty much a guitar groove with weird little ditties on top. Pop music at its purest.”
Yet no one writes pop songs quite like Tweak Bird. Take ‘The Sun/Ahh Ahh’, the album’s first single, is kicked forward by a nagging, tough riff, before peaking halfway and gently spiraling away into an extended saxophone solo by sometimes-third-band-member, John McCowan, while ‘Flyin’ High’ adds the unexpected color of a frail flute. It’s a scream to a whisper, an inversion of the usual formula. Lyrically their songs regularly return to the themes of space travel and escape, with the raucous astral optimism of ‘Lost In Lines’ and ‘Sky Ride’ evocative of lost sixties psychedelic dreamers like KAK and Population II.
Their sound is different too. Caleb plays a baritone guitar, pitched (and sized) halfway between a regular guitar and bass and most often used by early surf bands. “I didn’t even know they existed when we started out,” he says, “But I always wanted something heavier.” Now he regularly faces questions from curious fans, laughing at the suggestion that he might start a trend. Alongside him the powerhouse Ashton knows that drums are not for tapping. “The secret’s in my arms,” he jokes, “Most drummers are into having a good sounding drum set, but to me most drums sound good if you hit them hard. That’s my trick.”
Making loud, heavy music together for a better part of a decade in various incarnations, the Bird brothers live shows are blistering and unpredictable, with the ebb and flow of their sets the direct response of each others onstage cues of expression that range from delight to fury. They’re just as unpredictable offstage. “When we’re not playing music we’re arguing about something,” says Caleb. “We bring friends along on tour which brings the tension down.”
But it’s the tension that makes their sound so intriguing. Clad in one of the great mock-heroic sleeves, Tweak Bird defies easy categorization, sometimes frenetic, sometimes ominous, always joyous. “Don’t look back. The future’s coming,” goes the speaker stretching opener ‘The Future’. It’s pop alright, but not as we know it.
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