Birdie – Triple Echo (2001) – LITTLE LOST CLASSICS

Music invariably takes you wherever you want it needs be, and not where he wants be. Unless, of course, when you are someone who, as the master’s song says, lets life take you; but Zeca, we know, doesn’t talk about algorithms.

Today I was in a bad mood that seemed endless, inflicting on my poor heart countless songs that shrunk and squeezed it, and with each song played another was suggested, in a merry-go-round of sadness where the horses changed color and shape but had inside the same emptiness.

Until late in the afternoon, as I learned from the late Rita, I decided to change. I escaped the seemingly bottomless pit in which I was clinging to the cracks in its bricks, or in this case ‘songs to get out of trouble’. I was pulling out memories and throwing myself into several different trips and at some point “Day by day” played, from Dolly Mixturethen I stopped, then I ran to listen to the Cambridge trio and in a wonderful rain of synapses (thank you forever for this phrase, Calm down, horrible people) I was quickly taken to Birdie, a project by the former Dolly Debsey Wykes, and so here we are.

Firstly, Birdie has nothing in common with Dolly Mixture other than Debsey’s voice. The duo formed by her and Paul Kelly in the nineties made exactly the kind of enlightened and calm music that I needed today (return to the first paragraph), and if I were a young mystic I would say that the universe conspired in my favor ( hahahahaha).

I discovered the duo thanks to their direct connection with Saint Etienne, as they were both arms and voices of the London trio – as far as I know – at the beginning of their career (it is Debsey who sings on “Who do you think you are”, a single by Etiennes released in 1992). In common between the groups, but with each one demonstrating in their own way, their passion for 1960s music.

I confess that it’s been a while since I listened to either of Birdie’s two albums and when it came to choosing one to save myself and later play here I decided on the second, less known and last of them, Triple echofrom 2001. Not that Some dustyfrom 99, failed to fulfill the mission of rescuing this troubled soul, but on this album the combination between Ms. Wykes’ sweet voice and the (various) instruments played by Kelly sounds more airy and floating to my ears, with 12 songs that recall very much on the pop side of Stereolab – with that somewhat innocent aura of the 60’s brought to the 90’s/00’s – and, most importantly, they gave me the peace I so needed today.

Thank you, music that saves! Thanks, Birdie!

Or in spotifalho