The Bird Of Music, the second album from Au Revoir Simone, finds the Brooklyn three-piece chirping like a bird with a broken wing. They’re sweet, a little needy, and really you’re not sure whether you want to nurse them back to health or nuke them out of their misery.
The story here is an old one: life and love gone and done these ladies wrong, crushed their sensitive hearts in a vice. “Play me a sad song ‘cause that’s what I wanna hear/I want you to make me cry,” they lament on ‘Sad Song’. This is seriously introverted indie, as delicate as fine china, and like mother’s best crockery, it’s something you’ll only want to take out on rare occasions. Above a weeping wall of keyboard-driven sound and wind-chime percussion their ethereal voices float, creating music for the fainthearted. “Nothing hurts like seeing you hurt like me,” they bleat on ‘Fallen Snow’, which is all very nice but not the sort of thing to rouse anyone from their antidepressant-induced stupors.
Only on the vaguely sinister ‘A Violent Yet Flammable World’ and the vigorous ‘Night Majestic’ do they really engage. Elsewhere it’s all very Belle And Sebastian with synthesisers, cutesy and inoffensive, offering little to make us regret biding Au Revoir Simone goodbye.