The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity and its companion LP, Monster, from Seeming. August 2020, physical; August 2020, digital, Birdwatcher's; September 2020, digital, Monster. Artoffact Records.
For a long time, until a few months ago, I listened almost exclusively to film and game and television scores. That's changed, as you might gather, but what hasn't changed is my favorite project, Seeming, which I've loved ever since Sol: A Self-Banishment Ritual, their second album, from 2017.
You can imagine my joy when The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity came out. So, here's a review of it and its companion LP.
This will be slightly different from other reviews in that I will not be pointing to Seeming's influences, not least because I lack the knowledge to be able to do so. I am speaking purely in terms of my own reactions and interpretations, how I connected with it.
The Birdwatcher's Guide to Atrocity
Having listened to it a couple times around, my impressions have changed from the first listen. Initially it felt less cohesive then Sol did, but further listens reveal that, though there's a greater level of stylistic distinctiveness from song to song, it's as thematically tight, if not tighter, then Sol.
So, song-by-song.
"The Fates" was described by Alex as an experiment in tempo -- a Shepard's tone for speed. A Shepard tone is a song that seems to be constantly rising in pitch, which is created through carefully layering multiple glissandos on top of each other and fading them in and out as appropriate. It's a singularly interesting song for that, ending with beautiful wordless female 'calls.'
In the weeks leading up to release, a handful of songs from Birdwatcher's were released as singles, and the first of those was "Go Small." This one is comforting, and reassuring -- not in the manner of lying, of a false comfort that says all will be well when we all know it won't, but in the manner of offering a different focus, presenting you a different means of living. "So if there's a play for suvival, it's go small."
One of my two favorites from the album is "Someday Lily." This song speaks to me on a deep level. Figuring out myself, and trying to live that truly, is something that I've thought about a lot this year. "Don't go believing that here and now is how it's got to stay." It's good to be reminded of that.
"The Flood Comes for You" is dark, on the other hand. It's fatal, even, suggesting a miserable and horrifying world overcome by water. Seeming has always looked straight at the anthropocene, and the post-anthropocene, and this is its darkest look yet. We will all drown. And you will, too.
Another single: "Remember to Breathe," opening with a capella vocalizations, echoing (it's delay, of course) again and again, creating a backdrop akin to Steve Reich's minimalist works. As you might expect from the title, this one's comforting.
But, here's the thing: comfort and darkness sit alongside each other. In fact, throughout this album, the two are irrevocably and inextricably linked and unified. "Like a tall tree I am pining to be taken out by lightning" -- this is grand, even mythical stuff. But just a few lines later, Alex Reed pulls a magic trick and draws us from the larger-than-life into the quotidian. "I didn't do it today because I didn't want you to deal with the cops."
From here, the apocalypse fetishization of "End Studies" -- dark, dark instrumental tone, neutral vocal tone, and the lyrics themselves never declare a straightforward allegiance. Yes, this is a dark song, and the future is dark... and maybe that's good. "The future will be borderless / and red and queer and bold / for I was born to make my kind extinct."
Song seven of the ten is my outright favorite: Piano, and percussion, and Alex Reed. "Permanent" has comfort, too, and then it suddenly takes a turn into personal tragedy and trauma, Alex briefly ceasing to sing and speaking for a moment. And then suddenly Alex is trying to pick back up the pieces of the structure. There's a line so fantastic that I don't dare quote it, and then we return to the chorus: "And the music our footprints write is permanent / more permanent then sound." If that isn't one of my favorite lyrics, ever, I don't know what is.
And then the piano's gorgeous upper range comes in, having previously restrained itself to the low-mid range. Seeming: it's got the HNNNG factor.
One can imagine a world right next door where "Permanent" was the closer, so good is it. But no: Alex Reed isn't done yet, and we have three tracks remaining.
The first of these takes aim at consensus reality itself, with "Reality is Afraid," presenting it as clay in our hands, as something that can cave to our demands. It taps into something deep inside: the desire to change the world, to remake it. For all that this is a theme of immense scale -- it takes on reality itself! -- often, the tone is intimate. Remaking the world? Not quite, perhaps: remaking your world, making it safe for you, making it comfortable for you.
After this comes "Learn to Vanish," a spoken word piece with Bill Drummond as speaker. He's someone that I gather is a Big Name, but I'd never heard of him until this album. I'm not entirely sure what to think of this. Sometimes, it seems trite, but the accompaniment here is fantastic, and Drummond's voice is quite soothing.
And we come to the end. Somehow, Alex Reed, in the midst of taking a good hard look at the world and the past few years, finds a way to write a song of triumphant, in "Celebration Song." But this is by no means an uncomplicated triumph. It's by no means even so much as joyful.
"So grab the biggest rock you can find / and go pulping the century out of your mind." In the midst of the lyrics the "this is fine" dog is outright invoked, and certainly it doesn't open with triumph but with dark humming. This is triumph -- but this is the triumph of desperately struggling to survive, of hurling yourself about to find joy.
The world is mad, mad, mad, and this song revels in it: "Finally, finally it's here / your excuse to go permanently mad."
Triumph, maybe. It certainly adopts the appearance of it. But it also ends with ending, and much as I said that "Permanent" might be the closer in another world, "Celebration Song" is the perfect closer to this. "Now I am out of the picture," and a couple lines later, Alex Reed's voice disappears (removing him from the picture in a literal way), leaving the warbling of birdsong behind.
Monster:
A Seeming companion LP is a different beast from the album releases: it is not quite as tight, and it often includes a couple remixes of other Seeming songs. Nevertheless, Monster is an excellent companion to Birdwatcher's.
"Be Like Lightning" retains the intimate grandeur of the album and so serves as an excellent segue into this overall more disparate collection (though one, of course, unified by the impeccable production that Seeming always brings). It's a song presenting love as exciting, dynamic -- different both from the staid depictions and from the depictions that present it as dangerous and unstable.
"You Rang" on the other hand feels like a Sol off-cut: exploring, once again, post-anthropocene themes, and, as Sol did, doing so with a somewhat sideways approach.
The title song is "Monster," and here we see singer as monster questioning his own monstrousness: transformation, once again, so often a theme of the best Alex Reed songs. A particular lyric highlight is "Though I am eleven / I know my depression / even better then my reflection" -- for the listener, like me, who tries to pull either narrative or theme out of a song, this is rich with it, and there are many different interpretations you can make of it.
"I Recognize You" is the most furious song here -- perhaps the most furious song on the whole album. Alex's voice goes to the lows of its range, producing an angry, almost-but-not-quite rasping growl. Anyone who had a beloved friend and watched them transform into something, well, unrecognizable, will understand this song and sympathize with it.
This next song I misunderstood initially, thinking it a demented love song. In fact, "Radically" is a demented sex song. Sex and passion spoken of in terms of the end of the world, in terms of crisis. "I want you with lunacy / my head full of daffodils / a list of demands / the bombing of capitols." (I've pulled a small lie on you. It's both a love and a sex song.)
Track six: "Grief." As the track suggests, it's about grief, grief as maker and shaper. "Grief is a craft that I've perfected at last," "Grief is the plan guiding all that I am." There is an almost-catharsis to this. In between, we get a couple interludes. "Discipline my wistful skin." At the very end, though, Alex's voice drops into its low, growling range: "Drop and give me ninety-nine tears / don't slow down your factory gears / I don't know but I've been told / we need some discipline here." Almost catharsis. An approach to it. Making its way into its vicinity -- but not quite there.
As Seeming is wont to do, its songs engage directly with the world. "Quiet as the Dead" is even more overt about this then others, at once a condemnation of the #resistance and a requiem for everyone that has ever tried to change the world. You can take the song either way -- again, multiplicity of interpretation. I should spare a word for the production, shouldn't I? The percussion is especially metallic and crunchy, and Alex's voice sounds especially spacious.
I am sorry to say it because it is, as always, produced excellently, and I love the glissandoing synthesizers, but "Niagara Falls" is probably my least favorite track across the release. Though Alex is as capable as ever, I don't feel that his low, growling range is generally where his voice sounds like. It fits the song, of course; I just don't quite like the sound of it. With more listens I may change my mind.
The last original song on Monster is an intimate piece, quiet and moving, called "Something Desperate." It could be the name of either album, if it so wanted. Alex's voice is recorded very dry here -- there's subtle reverb, but it feels very dry otherwise, very close to the microphone -- and the feeling that Alex is singing/speaking directly to you adds to that sensation of intimacy.
This leaves two remixes. The first of these is "Doomsayer (FIRES Mix)," a remix by a band called FIRES, is reasonably solid. The interest here comes, I think, from hearing a whole 'nother artistic mindset working with Alex's vocals and applying its own sensibilities and production to it. I don't think it adds too much, but it's worth a listen, and there are a handful of moments within it that are quite good.
The second is "Go Small (Big Mix)," a longer mix of "Go Small" from Birdwatcher's. This is a fantastic remix -- the stripped down production (the humming that backed much of the original is used mainly for the original) alongside a more energetic percussion line gives it a different sense of scope. Despite that stripped down production, it really is a big mix.
Conclusion:
Of course Alex Reed knocks it out of the park with a fantastic album and a quite good companion LP. Highly recommended, naturally.
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