deary – Birding

deary and me go back a ways. I’ve picked up every one of their releases on vinyl, right from that ‘Fairground single. I loved what they did on Sonic Cathedral, and when I played ‘Alfie’ on my DKFM Shoegaze Radio show last month it felt like that this London trio had found their sound and were ready for that all important debut album. Now it’s here via Bella Union. Birding feels like a real step forward. Rebecca “Dottie” Cockram, Ben Easton and Harry Catchpole sound completely at ease with themselves across these eleven songs, and that ease gives the record its strength. Cockram explains the choice of Birding as the album title.

The band sound at ease all the way through Birding. The haze and glow of the earlier releases are still present, but the writing feels firmer now and the themes reach further in. This is a record shaped by grief, self-reflection, care, innocence and the damage people do to each other and the world around them. Even with those heavy ideas at its core, it never loses its sense of beauty. Let’s drop the needle and I’ll tell you all about it.

‘Smile’ opens the album with, what I’d call, a gentle force. The first thing that strikes you is how much sharper the band sound here. The guitars have bite, the drums land with more weight, and Dottie pushes the vocal right to the front. The lyrics deal with violence against women and the fear and anger that comes with living alongside those headlines. The song carries urgency in every part of its arrangement. The words come quickly, almost breathlessly, giving the whole thing a hard emotional edge. It is a bold and beautiful way to begin.

After that intensity, ‘Seabird’ opens the space around the record. The beat gives it a subtle swing while the guitars spread out into something broader and more luminous. The Robin Guthrie influence is on show here to great effect. I loved this one as a single and it still feels huge in the album sequence. There is a real sense of soaring through the sky in the way it moves, yet it still holds onto the ache that sits underneath so much of Birding. That balance between uplift and sadness is one of deary’s strongest qualities, and ‘Seabird’ shows it beautifully.

With ‘Baby’s Breath’ the mood turns more intimate. The title suggests delicacy and the song does have that softness, but there is enough grit in the guitars and enough uncertainty in the tone to stop it from feeling too fragile. The result is a song that feels very close and very human, as though you are hearing someone think through difficult feelings in real time.

At just over two minutes, ‘Gypsophila’ works as a brief clearing of the air. It gives the album a moment to breathe without losing momentum. The soft and velvety textures they create here are luscious. It leaves behind a soft trace and keeps the flow of the album moving with real care.

‘Blue Ribbon’ blooms from the outro with a nod to the eighty’s synth pop sound. I’m a huge fan of the way they use the bass on this track. Pushing it forward in the main but pulling it back in those quieter passages for full effect. Dottie really gets to show her range here, from the breathy linking sections to the powerful and punctuated “I believed in you”. It’s a vivid demonstration of the journey this band have been on that they now find themselves producing songs of this calibre.

Then comes ‘Garden Of Eden’. This was a complete left turn the first time I heard it, Taking the lead more from Laura Marling than Liz Fraser. It’s an acoustic almost quintessentially English folk song. By all thoughts this shouldn’t work but, by god, it absolutely does. Its utterly beautiful and almost had me in tears first listen. I’d love to hear more of this from deary. Maybe a short folk ep in their future.

I was already fond of ‘Alma’ before hearing the full album, and it only grows in stature here. This is one of the warmest songs on Birding, with a melody that opens up in a way that feels almost cleansing. Dottie has described it as a song tied to growth and self-care, and that comes through in the music. There is a generosity to it, but also a sense of looking back at earlier versions of yourself with honesty and compassion. It leans closer to dream pop than some of the heavier moments here, yet it still feels completely in keeping with the rest of the record.

Placed after ‘Alma’, ‘No Sweeter Feeling’ gives the album one of its gentlest passages. The melody has an easy grace to it, and there is a softness in the vocal that feels deeply sincere. Built on a trip hop beat (Portishead anyone) what I like most is that the band never let that sweetness become sentimental. There is always something slightly shaded beneath the surface, which keeps the emotion believable and lets the song hold its shape.

By the time ‘Terra Fable’ arrives, Birding begins to turn inward again. There’s an almost all-consuming darkness in its atmosphere. The song takes its time, evolving slowly revealing its many textures. It feels like it could have come from one of those early Cocteau Twin albums but for its trip hop beat which is really pleasing to the ear when it arrives.

‘Alfie’ is undoubtedly the emotional centre of the record and it absolutely earns that role. Having played it on my radio show last month, I already knew it was special, but in the full sequence it lands even harder. Written around the loss of Ben’s family dog, the song grows far beyond that starting point into something much wider about grief, memory and the strange way love stays present after someone is gone. The running time gives deary space to let the emotion build slowly, and they use that space well. By the end it feels huge, with the band pushing everything outward until the song seems to open into the sky.

The title track, ‘Birding’, closes the album with a lovely sense of proportion. It does not try to outdo what came before it. Instead, it gathers the album’s ideas into one final moment of reflection. The themes of care, vulnerability and learning from what life has done to you all still sit here, but expressed with a light touch. It feels like the right ending for a record so concerned with paying attention, whether that is to nature, to memory, or to the softer parts of yourself.

Birding is an album that keeps in constant contact with the feelings that drove the band to write these songs. deary understand song shape, texture and emotional pacing at a very high level, and they know when to lift a lyric in the middle of all that beautiful noise. For those of us who have followed them from the Sonic Cathedral days to this Bella Union debut, there is something deeply satisfying in hearing them reach this point. Spend time with Birding and it keeps giving more back. That feels fitting for a record named after the act of really looking.

Birding is out now via Bella Union. You can check it out over on the deary Bandcamp page.

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