The back story bespeaks the cardinal virtues of hard graft and raw talent. Born in Meath, Wallis Bird relocated to Wexford as a child before spending her early 20s honing her considerable chops in the Ballyfermot Rock School, subsequently polishing her act to within an inch of its life in the pubs and clubs of Germany and the UK.
That said, one imagines her natural home is the US, where road warriors can prevail over flashes in the pop pan, and where her natural Lilith Fair tendencies and Phish-like virtuosity guarantee a college constituency.
Bird’s tunes pivot on crack musicianship, complicated time signatures and melodies that borrow from muso folk and jazz styles. The level of playing puts her up there with halcyon Irish prog wizards like Lir and the Mary Janes: in the Vinne brothers, a pair of Black Forest drum ‘n’ bass boffins, she’s got one of the supplest rhythm sections this writer has ever clapped ears on.
The opening ‘Counting To Sleep’ is the most immediate thing here. Halfway between Ani DiFranco’s anti-Napoleon complexes and Tori’s ‘Cornflake Girl’, it bristles with masterclass polyrhythms and churning piano, over which Bird delivers spiky lines that showcase a lyrical dexterity equal to her vocal prowess. Her finest moment, although it’s almost matched by the rather lovely ‘The Circle’ and ‘Just Keep Going’, sublime melodies sat upon subtly shifting backing tracks incorporating elements of flamenco double-strumming, autumnal Scullion and cinematic strings. Elsewhere, tunes like ‘6ft 8’ and ‘Slow Down’ are pitched between whimsy and ennui, interpolating ragtime and scat vocalese into ornate folk-rock settings. And when she really lets rip (‘Bring Me Wine’), Bird proves an adept blues shouter.
However, one occasionally wonders what kind of nuggets she might cough up if she curbed the showy shapes and submitted to the economy of pure pop. She’s already mastered chamber folk minimalism (the lovely ‘You Are Mine’) and is undoubtedly a prolific, restless writer, but I’d love to hear her combustible talent contained within the walls of a good old 4/4 verse-chorus radio hit format.
Still, Spoons is an audacious and ambitious opening statement. Welcome to Birdland.