California music doesn’t always have to be about the beach and surfing and pretty girls. The partnership of Aidin Sadeghi and Bret Leinen that form Irvine-based Strange Birds is inspired by California as well, but they present us with a much more intimate portrait of the landscape.
It has a quality of an old memory. The varying amounts of reverb on the vocals stir up a nostalgia that feels as if it’s still close enough to touch. The calm guitar strumming and softly harmonizing vocals on "Save Me" and "Winterbirds" serve up the perfect amount of melancholy equivalent to a rainy fall day. The melodies are simple and repetitive to lull you into total comfort and keep you there. The excitement lies in the details and flourishes in order to take the listener by surprise within their music. These can be exemplified in the dramatic shift from the tranquil pace in the beginning of "Bandages" to a throbbing electric guitar jam for the last minute of the song and the descent from jazzy guitar beats in "Chasing Ghosts" to shivering psychedelia at the end. Each second of the songs are meticulously crafted, but it flows as if done completely effortlessly. It sounds as if the Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver ran away into the forests and the mountains, and came out with this EP.
– Taylor Lampela
