The Bug Club – Rare Birds [2LP]

Bingo Records

£30.58

Format: 2 x LP
Catalogue No.: BINGO004
Barcode: 5056688812843
Release Date: 27 Oct 2023
Genre: Indie / Garage Rock

After a live album (of new, one-off tracks) and an EP to get the year started at a leisurely pace, The Bug Club cap off 2023 with their second full-length album - an hour-and-a-bit long double LP called Rare Birds: Hour of Song. Now then, what could you possibly have to say that takes two records to spit out? Pay attention to this and learn. It's The Bug Club's Hex Enduction Hour. South Wales' Double Nickels On The Dime. It's The Faust Cycle for people with shorter attention spans. Their eighth release since joining forces with Bingo Records in 2020, 'Rare Birds...' is a culmination of a year spent relentlessly touring. But it's not one of those hackneyed road records. It's about birds, to an extent. Well, it is, and it isn't. And it is 47-songs long, featuring 23 Cutler-esque spoken-word tracks that weave through the music telling a surreal story to accompany the band’s usual witty, taut garage rock. Oh, and it comes with a fully illustrated, 32-page book. Vocalist and guitarist Sam Willmett attempts to explain: “All the songs were written in our summer holiday lull before we went away to tour (debut album) Green Dream in F♯ last year. Then we picked the lucky winners to go on the album when we got home around Christmas. “We just wrote every day we were home, mostly in the garden. That’s probably why it's vaguely about birds. All the songs are in the order they were written apart from the last two which we swapped around. I only actually remember writing one song, ‘Passionflower, Paperbacks and Woodlice’, which came about as I was sat by a passionflower when a woodlouse crawled over my paperback. I thought it looked and sounded nice. We wrote the wordy bits in one hit around the songs once the record was nearly done. One big story. We think the record is like a fall asleep relaxation tape with the cartoon ‘burd’ narrating and guiding you.” Need to know more? Spare us an hour and four minutes. That's what we're asking of you here. It's a big ask, these days. But if you do, you'll find yourself entrenched in an immersive world of The Bug Club. The other records - with the sardonic and surreal, the riffs and the obsession with outer space - were a run up. With Rare Birds... Sam, Tilly and Dan have created an expansive environment in which we can all bask in a cocktail of garage rock, poetry, nonsense, wordplay, sentimentality and fuck-offs. Ivor Cutler's come round to play with Gordon Gano and Kimya Dawson in a semi-detached in Caldicot.

Track list: 1. burds wurds – my first lie 2. samuel was beautiful tonight 3. burds wurds – for feeling 4. I Will Feel The Same 5. burds wurds – tomorrow’s triangle 6. Undone 7. burds wurds - I think we’ll go with this 8. fully clothed 9. burds wurds – the key 10. Marriage 11. burds wurds – shut my beak 12. Four Sisters 13. burds wurds – what's your sweet cereal? 14. Is This The Music You Like? 15. Can Ya Change A Thing Like This? 16. burds wurds – hot emptiness 17. We Can’t All Play Saxophones 18. burds wurds – big gold medallion 19. Short And Round 20. burds wurds – louder than normal ha ha ha 21. Passionflower, Paperbacks And Woodlice 22. burds wurds – the pantry flap 23. Blues Magicians