Album Review: Birdy – Birdy
Birdy
Released 7th November 2011
I came across Birdy because she covered one of my favourite tracks ever; Bon Iver’s Skinny Love. I didn’t even know she had an album planned, let alone recorded and pressed and waiting on my door mat until I got home one day and found it there. Now, often you’ll hear me saying that I’m not always the biggest fan of covers and this is an album that is simply full of them. You’ll probably be thinking that for that reason alone I won’t like this. That couldn’t be further from the truth though. This album is simply delightful. Birdy knows exactly how to put just the right amount of twist on an original to make it feel as though it was always her own. Skinny Love is only one example of this. This version is a little more punchier due to it’s slightly faster pace. Birdy’s vocal is simply stunning, there’s no denying that. The piano work is what really makes this track feel so alive though. It’s just very clean, clear and crisp and I now love this equally as much as I do the Bon Iver version.
The other thing I really like about this album is that as a concept it doesn’t feel cheesy, it really could have been badly done. Birdy is no ordinary cover artist though. It is important to her that she has her own stamp on some of the songs that she herself loves. You can hear that these are songs that she believes in, cares about and shares a sense of emotion with, it really comes through. It also introduced me to a few tracks that I hadn’t heard before, sharing the love for other’s music is something that I totally and utterly understand. She, of course, does this in a totally different way to what I do, but I get it and it’s a wonderful achievement that she has been able to do it with such style. Songs that are new to me here are Fire And Rain, opening track 1901 and for a while I couldn’t quite place Without A Word, because she’d made it feel so her own.
I have to also mention the fabulous reworking of some other tracks that she has covered. I was surprised, a little, to hear a cover of Cherry Ghost’s People Help The People. I’m not too sure why I was surprised, perhaps because it was quite a poppy track. This gives it a whole new feel. I can’t tell you enough how great this album is but in particular this rework. The vocal arrangement isn’t so different, but the new tone and feel comes mainly from the music which is quite simply beautiful. There’s no indie guitars here and the first few bars of the piano are so sweet they make me feel so alive and in love with music as though I’d never heard it before. It takes a hell of a lot for me to hear something that makes me fall in love with music all over again. It’s albums like this, performers like this, that really make me glad that I have the ability to feel this kind of a connection with music. The string arrangements in this version also give the track so much drama, it fits it really well. A slight jazz edge follows the track along the way with the drums. I’ve always liked this song but now I love it.
I’m totally aware that I am simply raving about this album but well I have to be honest and I am pretty excited about it. I’m telling anyone who will listen about it and that you wouldn’t even know it was a covers album. The tracks that have been chosen all work really well together, the way they all join together works amazingly well too. If you had their original counterparts in this order it wouldn’t work half as well, but Birdy has sprinkled her magic all over tracks by the XX, The National, Fleet Foxes, Phoenix and others, and now they fit like a glove.
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