Astonishing all-female retro-futurist debut from Birdvox – four multi-media polymaths from across the whole spectrum of Scottish music. Just listen to them sing!

HYDRO-ELECTRIC

I don’t know what they put in the water, north o’ the border, but if it’s good enough to make and mix with the whisky, clearly it has something in it, unavailable in the tepid tap I get down here. And this album proves it, yet another mingling, grouping, collective, whatever of feisty women, singers, songwriters, musicians all, casting aside any undue allegiance to genres or stylistic silos, everything up for grabs in a taut and tight weave of influences and inspiration.

Birdvox features the four voices of Inge Thomson, Jenny Sturgeon, Sarah Hayes and Charlotte Printer, along with as many instruments as they can play. Thomson we know best from her work with Karine Polwart, but she has also an established solo footprint, as well as being also a member of another similar, if larger, grouping, Hen Hoose. Sturgeon is a member of Salt House and of duos with Boo Hewerdine and M.G. Boulter, Hayes is with Admiral Fallow and Printer has been an Altered Image. This record sounds remarkably unlike any of those, and it is any guess quite where you might best manage to file it under.

GORGEOUS SQUELCH

It is with a gorgeous squelch of vintage synth that the album opens, ahead bursting into joy with a full frontline of similar analogue sounds and electronic beats. Imagine Kate Bush fronting the Human League in 1981, and you’re close to the sound. But is that a flute busting through with a wild hooley of jiggery-pokery? Indeed it is! This is Sea Change and it is as good an opening track as any I have heard this year.

No fluke, Cicadas, arrives hot on the heels, all sinuous swirling keys matched well with one-note prods. Another Celtic melody invades, without losing any sight of the 4:4 doof. I am uncertain who is taking the vocal lead, guessing Hayes, her voice having a slightly grainy quality to it, like a fine wholegrain mustard. Harmonies add honey, as Thomson plies additional accordion. All 4 have a hand in the drum programming. King Orfeo is then structurally a spreadsheet ballad narrative, sung in classic style, if presented on a scaffold of beats, thuds and dub basement bass, the latter from Printer. And if the diction sounds a bit off, note it is written in Norn, a now extinct Scandinavian language that used to be spoken in Shetland, the melody a reworking of Corrina Dawn’s tune, Bass Strathspey, played on synth, bass and accordion.

A BOUNCING MELANGE

Sparx is back to Dare/Hysteria era Human League, even of the vocals aren’t, smacking more of Icelandic band, Amiina, a bouncing melange of o o os, before the quartet come together in rich and gloopy harmony. Accordion pairs with the rotating synth patter, with a trombone, from guest, Chris Greive, making an unexpected entry. It’s an extraordinary track. Dense treated vocals introduce Set Me Up, before a lead vocal imparts an eerie lament, as echo and added sounds dip in and around the vocal melody, the stabbed synth offering a curiously maritime entity to the song. Eerie and ethereal, it stops as it starts, without warning.

Gannets is possibly the most orthodox slice of tuneage here, a flute heavy slice of folktronica. (Both Thomson and Hayes are flautists as well as anything else.) Discordant textures add themselves on, like rust, ahead taking their own lead for a moment. The beats tip and patter like electronic footfall on a roof, perhaps the gannets of the title. Almost And Re-Dos then jumps back to remind how much we enjoyed its standalone release in the summer, before the languid drawn out Grey Fedder. This haunting ambient soundscape has a keening vocal quality, first in solo and then in the full 4 part. Another flavour of the Northern Isles, it is a Shetland dialect version of Grey Feather a poem by Roseanne Watt. (Thomson comes originally from Fair Isle and Sturgeon currently lives on the Shetlands, so each have affinity)

1980’S OR 2080’S?

If the Human League are one reference, it is the associated Giorgio Moroder who is all over Fire Baby, 4 minutes of rhythmic frothy pop. Is this Printer singing? if so, there is more than a hint of Clare Grogan in this one-time bandmate of the Happy Birthday hitmaker. If this were the 80’s, Birdvox would be on Top of the Pops. Tentative flute is then the oblique start to Shape Of A Friend, which veers straight into Bananarama territory, unless, of course, that is my wishful thinking. Either way, electro-pop is alive in 2026.

It gets a tad more serious for We Are, a song that raises the spectre of climate change and end of days. “We are alone, but not alone, we are trying to be good, we trying to make it right“. If you think Eurythmics meet, once more, Kate Bush, that is a veer in the right direction. It also sort of sets up the right ambience for Wagtails, the closer (and flip of the earlier single). Sturgeon has previously made a number of music and found sound collages, and it is likely her hand here, as the sound of the eponymous birds flit in and out the beats, with flute and accordion taking turn to steer the euphonic theme. After all the dancing, it is a just the tonic to sit this last one out.

POP POP GO

What can I say? As stated, this isn’t easily classifiable, unless pure pop is enough and are words that don’t offend any serious listener. I’m not offended and neither should you be. It’s terrific.

Here’s King Orfeo:

Birdvox: Website

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