BIRD-DOG: REVIEWS

Some sixteen months on from its inception the new Verlaines opus is finally amongst us. The eventual appearance of this long player has been preceded by a virtual litany of misfortune and ineptitude. Finished as far back as March of last year the album was due for pressing at EMI Lower Hutt but alas the plant closed down. Disappointment was compounded when a second attempt at pressing in Sydney saw the NZ masters being rejected as "useless". Arrangements were then made for simultaneous Australian and US cutting from copy masters around Christmas '87 but in nightmare of slapstick proportions two side-one tapes were sent to Sydney while their counterparts arrived in New York. On the heels of that veritable catalogue of woes it comes as something of a relief to be able to say, that yes, friends, it was worth the wait. On first meeting Verlaines songs have rarely been the kind to clobber you over the head or seize you by the lapels. Of course there have been exceptions, the stuttering brilliance of "Death and the Maiden" springs to mind but it is with repeated exposure the strengths and nuances of Bird Dog emerge. The superb backing vocals on the haunting "You Forget Love" for instance or the escalation of "Slow Sad Love Song" from just that to a beast of rabid designs. It should be said that Graeme Downes' voice has rarely sounded so much in control, emotive and assured. Allied with this the brass and strings add immeasurably to the spirit of the songs on offer. Songs being a crucial word, me-thinks. In an era when the dictates of sound and content are overwhelming Bird Dog stands up as a bold example of the enduring worth of the song. Having said that, The Verlaines inhabit a world very nearly uniquely their own, existing as it does on the periphery of a kind of bed-sit surrealism and indeed the logic of something like "Icarus Missed" lapses into a nocturnal world of almost oneric dimensions. The brightest star in this particular galaxy award goes to "Bird Dog", the song which builds from yearning regret through ferment to reach its zenith on its most gloriously absurdist refrain. "I love this imported German beer, they know how to make it over there, the bird returns to soothe my ear, I love this imported German beer." An ironic anthem for lager swilling lost boys everywhere. The album concludes with a splendid re-interpretation of "CD Jimmy Jazz & Me" where hopes do indeed spring eternal and the brass threatens to carry us up away to total abandon. For a band in such an apparent state of self imposed atrophy Bird Dog comes across as a revelatory affirmation of life as we live it. Great cover too guys.

Garth Cartwright, Alley Opp #4 (1988)



The Verlaines hail from Dunedin, New Zealand, a musical hothouse where pop conventions grow and blossom in weird ways. A record of offbeat beauty, Bird Dog is full of strummy guitars, shaky singing and great songs - sometimes reminiscent of the Velvet Underground and very different from the music of the Verlaines' countrymen in Crowded House.

The Verlaines' dynamics of volume and tempo veer far from the lock-step groove of most modern rock; the impressionistic melancholy of the lyrics stands out from the pack, too. "Where, oh where did the age come from/That struck such a sour note," mourns singer-guitarist Graeme Downes on the title track, and he could almost be talking about the spate of canned music that this record so strongly defies.

Downes is an idiosyncratic tune-smith. "You Forget Love" uses unorthodox chords that would make your guitar teacher tear his hair out, but note the perfectly angelic choir on the chorus. The band gets into a big raveup toward the end of "Take Good Care of It," then stops dead in its tracks for a tinkly xylophone break - you feel like you've just flown off the side of a cliff. "Slow Sad Love Song" starts off just like it says, then abruptly shifts into high gear, culminating in a crescendo of buzzing guitars that uncannily recalls the finale of "A Day in the Life." The Verlaines are taking you to a special place, and the road is rather twisty.

Michael Azzarad, Rolling Stone (RS 549)



"Devastating. But in a good way"

There's something truly exhilarating about finding yourself so immersed in an artist's work that you find yourself completely lost in their world, vivid with the images, emotions, hopes and dreams that they portray. And make no mistake: BIRD DOG is an exhilarating experience, of sorts. Graeme Downes' songwriting captures melancholy in terms so personal and compelling that you can't help but be swept up in the grandeur and anguish of his heartbreak.

From his declaration of "I'll see you in the death machine tomorrow, unless somebody's God intervenes" in the opening "Makes No Difference," Downes paints scene after powerful scene of lives where good times come only in a brief rush of alcohol or nicotine, where love inevitably torments and disappears, where happiness is only a memory. "I dream of being like I was before," he sings in "Take Good Care of It" -- an ambition whose impossibility doesn't stop him from longing for something, anything, better than the life he sees.

The album's high point comes at its midpoint, the aptly-titled "Slow Sad Love Song," which may well be the most harrowing, devastating entry to the "love song" category ever recorded. Building from a slow strum to a final, frenzied cacaphony of guitar and pain, Downes seizes the fragmented moments in time that define the death of a relationship ("Tones of resignation, 'I'll probably see you round.'"). In the song's final moments, his thin, anguished voice is literally howling in pain and confusion... and the effect is nothing shy of exhilarating.

The Verlaines' early albums (i.e. Juvenilia, Hallelujah) were overwraught with obtuse writing and musical structure (as if Downes was attempting to justify his Ph.D in music). Downes' most recent work (both his solo album and the Verlaines final Over The Moon) suffer from his increasingly off-key vocals and growing fascination with Tin Pan Alley. But in between, some remarkable music was produced -- and BIRD DOG is clearly the high point. Like the doomed dog on the cover, Downes' characters are forever searching for something beautiful and better, something just out of reach... something that will inevitably lead them over the side of a cliff. But as he sings in the album's finale, CD Jimmy Jazz and Me, "We live in hope." And sometimes, that's enough. -- Reviewer unknown (taken from the web)



I first heard this record driving to work on the Taconic Parkway in 1989. Memorable songs are like familiar smells, they heighten the awareness of your emvironment so you can immediately capture a time and a place. The lyrical imagery and 0 to 100 dB instrumental dynamics seem to play on this. "Take Good Care Of It" with its frenzied allusions to Camel cigarettes and "Bird-Dog" with its climactic singalong to imported German beer. These are real compositions, no producer listed. -- Reviewer unknown (taken from the web)