EP Review – Trout Fishing in America by Speckled Bird (Single Lock Records) (2023).
I have something of an aversion to alt. country music and, subsequently, the slide guitar sound. The aesthetic somehow reminds me of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and my chronic ADHD needs no invitation to take me on daydream trips down various country lanes being pursued by ‘Daddy hick’ and his wives and sisters (often the same thing) and the life-threatening buzz of their favorite murderous tools.
Finally, the simply wonderful Trout Fishing in America EP by Muscle Shoals-based quintet Speckled Bird appears to have provided me a much-needed antidote to my silly imagination with a mixture of jangle-pop and alt. country that comes together with a hitherto unheard beauty.
The EP deftly encroaches on its alt. country machinations with several nuances of jangle-pop. Initially, the simply sublime title track offers the lucid, jangling pop riffs of The Byrds throughout the 1st half of the track before the electric banjo and slide guitar become increasingly prominent in the latter parts, almost as if Speckled Bird want to remind us or themselves of their roots. Either way, everything is so laced with a sense of languid, gorgeous melody that the seams between the two genres are never noticed.
Similarly, the standout of the EP, Lousy Island, offers Stephen’s Shorestyle chiming jangle that twists itself around the wonderfully controlled vocal delivery of Adam Morrow (think the made for Americana sound of Band of Horses’Ben Bridewellwith his testes finally dropping) in a track that just wraps itself around the listener like a comforting hug.
Although 21st Century Ghost moves towards the orchestral massive of the Liam Frost and the Slowdown Family vibe, the jangle soon returns in the closing Most of the Time. Here the vocals shift emphasis to a Lou Reed sense of laconic that feels so perfectly correspondent to the slow burning majesty and sense of epic that the track reveals over almost five minutes.
A totally new band for me and one that I am so glad I found !
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