Recorded
entirely on a handheld voice recorder (and then released initially on recycled
cassette tapes), Bird-Brains has a
distinctly tinny feeling. Garbus’s music offers steady, thumping rhythms that
put the listener into a sort of tranced, zoned state and while the
instrumentation is danceable, the lyrics are anything but; throughout the
album, Garbus sings of gendered injustices, motherhood, and problems of self-image.
“Hatari,” the album’s lead single, is dangerous in how much it makes you want
to groove while ignoring the injustices being sung about. The lyrics and
instrumentation hit that perfect sweet spot between frictional and lovely,
making it easy to understand Bird-Brains
as an album of contradictions and double-standards; it’s a deceptively complicated
album filled with elements both harsh and tender that force the listener to listen
without passivity.
Consider, for example, the
interminably groovy mid-album cut “Jumping Jack.” The bass is crunchy, the
xylophone seems to be hitting the upper register limits of the recorder, and
the simple drum-fill takes on a Madlib-esque vocal quality. Like other great
Tune-Yards songs, the lyrics rework a nursery rhyme (“Jack and Jill” here) into
a modern feminist anthem that provides ample catharsis in a world overwhelmed
by patriarchal standards: “Driving past in his fast car / Jill says man you are
bizarre / Trying to tell me what to do / Watch out cause I’ll knock you out,”
Garbus sings simply and softly, weaponizing her traditionally feminine musical
impulses over the more traditionally masculine instrumentation. Garbus forces
us to recognize how she’s using these musical impulses, and how the gendered
presuppositions of them is ultimately a negative aspect that the music industry
stands to grow from.
There are
moments like this feminist catharsis on nearly every song on Bird-Brains, and the album is better for
it. “Fiya,” the album’s most well-known track, offers a nuanced, understated
perspective on feminine image issues that is equal parts bitter sadness and
incredible rage. Likewise, “News” attempts to critique the inherent gendered
power dynamic with the act of getting pregnant; “I can get real pregnant from
men and birds / Who sing much prettier than you,” Garbus conveys, undermining
the masculine figure’s potential. Garbus’s lyrics are never quite heavy-handed,
but neither are they understated – just like all of the gonzo rhythmic palettes
throughout the album.
Yet, Bird-Brains is not entirely angry; there is a certain sweetness
that pervades even the record’s harshest moments, one that, for all the rage
and dissatisfaction, still envisions a better world. That stage is set by the
album’s opening track, “For You,” which has Garbus sing an empathetic four bars
over a tender acoustic guitar to a young girl. After she’s done singing, we
hear that young girl enthusiastically playing with blueberries; there’s
discovery here, an innocence yet untarnished by the overwhelmingly negative
world so prominent on the rest of the album. It should come as no surprise that
that young girl never comes back on Bird-Brains.
Garbus could only protect her from the realities of our world for so long, but
the album she made for her – whoever she is – offers a steady, helpful, groovy
guide to this overwhelmingly shitty world.
So do the rest of the works in
Tune-Yards’ discography. W H O K I L L,
2011’s follow-up, is a defining record of the 21st century, expanding
in interesting ways on the groundwork set by Bird-Brains. Most recently, Garbus scored one of the most
emphatically political films of 2018, Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, which viciously, hysterically points out the
myriad of flaws in our capitalist society. Likewise, Tune-Yards’ most recent
record, I can feel you creep into my
private life, finds Garbus confronting the ways that she could be a better
political citizen, all the while combining the powerful rhetoric with rhythmic,
exuberant, groovy instrumentation. With Tune-Yards, being angry takes on a
certain fun quality.
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Harry Todd
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