Album Review: The Wooden Birds - Magnolia
It’s passé to use cliché, and equally outmoded to speak of anyone acquiring inspiration from Elliott Smith, Death Cab for Cutie and Iron and Wine. This puts me in a difficult position, since The Wooden Birds do just that. To be fair, Andrew Kenny, the vocals behind The Wooden Birds, has been making music as long as Death Cab for Cutie and Iron and Wine. I’ll add the tag cliché to this review in a gesture of honesty. Maybe The Wooden Birds could put such a label on the CD wrapper in a show of solidarity with me. Better yet, slap Elliott Smith’s name on it, call it From a Basement on the New Moon, and sell lots of records in the confusion. I missed my calling in some record label’s marketing department.
Setting aside Magnolia’s penchant for pinching its running time from musical giants, in keeping with honesty, the album pleases with a straight rudder and even keel toward smooth vocals and simple arrangements. Songs steer toward sleepy, melancholy melodies warm as the cup of black tea necessary for every listen.
Drums keep time and little more. Coffee house guitar strums lay alongside the beat only because this is not an a cappella album. Everything rests on the diaphanous voice of Andrew Kenny. Besides the maddeningly annoying “Quit You Once” (a product of whispers so slight they become hisses), Kenny babbles reassuringly through twelve songs. The tremolo in the guitar warbles along with him.
Andrew Kenny fronted the stellar American Analog Set outfit starting in 1996 using the exact same vocals, but American Analog Set took dares and bets with its music. AmAnSet generally won more than it lost, and built a reputation by never moving beyond obscurity. One wonders if Kenny didn’t throw up his hands on Magnolia and decide to give the masses small, digestible bites instead of the AmAnSet’s flavorful complexities.
While The Wooden Birds play it safe, tracks like “Seven Seventeen” and “Hometown Fantasy” diffuse any calls to mediocrity. Middle of the road doesn’t have to mean bland; however, bland is the rule not the exception on Magnolia. One song blends into the next. Nothing differentiates. Nowhere is this more glaring than in the drums. “Seven Seventeen” is “Bad” - literally; I’m struggling to find any difference at all. Michael Bell (the drummer for Lymbic System) put himself on autopilot, watched reruns of Scrubs on WGN and ordered pizza while wielding his sticks on Magnolia. There’s no other way to account for such lackluster, lukewarm skin work.
In a way, I’m throwing up my hands as well. The Wooden Birds put down twelve songs on Magnolia that cover no new ground and spoon feed the listener. One or two good songs don’t make an EP, much less a record of merit. The Wooden Birds may reach a wider audience while sacrificing credibility, a charge that could never be leveled at American Analog Set. A word of advice, Kenny: reform AmAnSet.
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Magnolia
@anonymous Are you sure? The promo CD I hold in my hand says he did.
Michael Bell didn’t play on the record.
Sounds like people would be better off just listening to Elliot Smith. It appears as though they take the subdued styling of good musicians and take all of the edge out of it. Thanks for steering me clear of this one.