Birdengine is Lawry Joseph Tilbury and The Crooked Mile, his debut album, is just that - a weird, twisted and crooked journey – but one that is an absolute delight to take.
The album has a classic, macabre feel to it that seems embedded in a musical landscape of old, yet somehow there is also something frighteningly contemporary about it, giving it a perplexing sense of place and an often malign and eerie sense of atmosphere. Underneath the surface - ensconced at the root - are essentially folks songs, ones not too out of line with such modern takes on the genre as Timber Timbre or Beirut, yet the strange and idiosyncratic vocal stylings and melodic knack makes this an aural experience that Wild Beasts would be proud to exude.
Opening song ‘Phantom Limb’ has a Spanish playfulness to it that dances around the song's core like a spiralling flamenco dancer. Tilbury croons a deep, baritone tune that almost makes the belly grumble. As the album steps forward through the murky and mystical sense of atmosphere it creates, we dip between tempos and tones, from the quaint, delicate offerings of ‘Dancing Bear’ and ‘Ghost Club’ to the grandiloquent ‘No Arms and No Friends’ which has a searing chorus not too distant from the chorus kings Arcade Fire.
The album's pinnacle lies in the dastardly ‘The Experiments of Dr Sarconi’ which, while not only being the album’s finest sonic moment through its gorgeous structure and irresistible melody, boasts the album’s greatest vocal performance - at times feeling otherworldly. The opening lines are strained and pushed, twisting themselves round a seethed tongue, and they soon mutate into an almost operatic delivery that gives the song a charming sense of variation and experimentation.
While the album seems destined to remain nothing more than a cult creation, loved and adored by a select few. The truth is that there is more than enough here both in terms of genuine worth and commercial appeal to make Birdengine a far more familiar site in people’s record collections. This is a debut album as beautiful as it is ghostly, traditional in sense and structure yet completely unique in ideas and delivery - plus, Tilbury has perhaps the most delightfully weird voice you’ll hear all year.