Bird Of Youth brings the dark night of the soul to light
Most bands express grief, loss and rage with singers screaming and guitars playing at an ear-blistering volume. On Get Off , the second album from Brooklyn’s Bird Of Youth, songwriter and singer Beth Wawerna takes a different approach. The music is played with a quiet intensity that emphasizes its poignant melodic structure, while her conversational vocals are delivered with a matter-of-fact anguish.
“The songs on this album were written during the darkest period of my life,” says Wawerna. “The songs are about coming of age, trying to be in a band, while working a day job and losing a parent. I was taking care of my dad while he was dying of cancer. It plunged me into a depression that was hard to deal with. I wrote most of the songs after he passed, in a fever dream of emotional intensity.”
In the songs, Wawerna shifts between the first and third person, mirroring the disjointed way some people experience feelings of alienation. “When I wrote ‘Passing Phase’ (one of the songs on the album), I made that shift a lot,” she says. “I didn’t realize I was doing it until I made the demo and heard myself switching from ‘she’ to ‘I.’ I wanted to convey the sense of watching myself doing self-destructive things. It was me, but I didn’t want it to be me. I want people to be uncomfortable when they listen to this album. I want them to feel those ugly, mad, hideous feelings and the cathartic release as well.”
When she sings, Wawerna has the syncopated phrasing of a jazz vocalist, fluidly dropping words before, after and against the beat.
“I haven’t studied jazz, but I love phrasing, and it plays into the way I write a song,” she says. “I never write words fi rst and then put music behind them. I start with a melody and go from there. There’s something in the phrasing of words that conveys as much emotion and feeling as the words themselves. I often think of Elvis Costello, Squeeze and the Replacements when I’m writing. I took the different ways you can work around a note or a beat from them. I probably labor over the words too much, but it’s just who I am as a writer. I want to tell stories that will make you feel something.”
Near the end of Get O ff, the band switches gears. After six introspective songs, the group erupts on “Bitter Filth,” a searing punk-rock screed. “I never though of writing a punk song,” says Wawerna. “Clint (Newman), my musical partner and guitarist, came up with a punchy ri ff, and we wrote the words together on top of it. It describes working at a crappy day job and playing in a band at night, slogging it out in a club with only four people in the audience. We vented our frustrations, and it was really fun. One day, I might want to write a whole record like that.”
—j. poet
