The Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard album’s alpha and omega moments are suitably at odds.
The last time Live4ever came across Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard was on a sunny Sunday afternoon in 2022, playing North Yorkshire’s Deer Shed festival.
With lead signer Tom Rees melting in the heat, all seemed well in the world for the Cardiff four-piece, who charmed the t-shirt weather crowd, enthusiastically belting out signature numbers like Double Denim Hop and John Lennon Is My Jesus Christ.
Eighteen months later, things have taken a darker turn. For a band who so far had been long on charm and even longer on the sounds of glam rock and effete guitar pop, Skinwalker goes to places few others than Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard might’ve predicted.
Conceptually based on the idea of a malevolent, shapeshifting creature shrouded in Native American mythology, the premise is a song cycle which takes the listener through the maze of Rees’ own, ‘inner fears, self-sabotage, hatred, and self-doubt’, in an attempt to gain better understanding.
In the real world, before the album was started he’d been suffering from anxiety and depression – issues which were eventually resolved by therapy – but with that came the realisation that unlike conventional ailments, those of the mind don’t come with a definitive cure.
The unsurprising outcome is a record which requires more by way of commitment than its predecessor, the Welsh Music Award-nominated Backhand Deals.
As part of the process Rees – who also produced – sought out some ‘shared catharsis’ by drawing fellow Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard band members guitarist Zac White, drummer Ethan Hurst and his brother and bassist Eddie more into the creative process; the wig outs here are collective as opposed to singular.
To begin, a brief squall of distortion opens like a jump scare before sliding into the brooding National Rust, which expertly traces the arid funk of Talking Heads, on the way splitting it 50/50 with a dissonant post-punk thud.
It’s followed by the schlocky B-movie fuzz of Chew, which begins ominously with, ‘Walking through the park/Just before dark/Red eyes are watching you’, which after a bit of pseudo-stalking then rips, riffs and shreds its way to an un-Hollywood ending of the damned.
As is a map of anyone’s mind when looked at from the outside, things are messy: My Star Sign Is A Bassett Hound – as you’d expect, ‘It goes bow wow wow’ – reflects an overarching narrative which is ‘mad loose’, one that here at least flexes some chunky playground Britpop
amongst the cornball allegories, somehow almost working in the process.
The danger of this kind of approach is to give rise to the suspicion of trivialising problems that have weight, but this is addressed directly on the more familiar sounding Bolanisms of Therapy (which doubles as an enthusiastic recommendation for it), whilst on Human Compression Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard musically go all Josh Homme whilst facing up to the tourniquet of self-induced pressure.
The album’s alpha and omega moments are suitably at odds: In My Egg begins gently enough with a strummed acoustic chord but escapes from itself into wildly rocked out abandonment, whilst closer Night Of The Skinwalker supposedly represents the end of the process, a proggy sounding, melodramatic finale which descends into a freewheeling thrash then spoken word ending; choose the symbolism that fits you best.
On Skinwalker, Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard reject their own status quo and go seek a hall of mirrors to better observe themselves.
Harder and more wicked than before, the noise they’ve made turns all their little demons into one; sunny afternoons in Thirsk have definitely gone bye bye.
