Birds of Passage is New Zealander Alicia Merz, and ‘Without the World’ is her debut album. You wouldn’t know it from listening to it: she’s arrived fully formed, with a set of songs so assured, so accomplished, it’s quite astonishing.
The press release advises us to file Birds of Passage under ‘Experimental / Acoustic / Lo-fi / Shoegaze / Drone’ – which would require one hell of a complex cross-referred filing system for my (admittedly extensive) music library, but I’m being facetious – and Merz’s minimal compositions do, undoubtedly, feature all of these elements. But that’s less than half the story, because with any story, it’s all in the telling.
Alicia's voice is magnificent, and she subtly, almost subliminally, draws you into the space she occupies. As the lonely harmonica gives way to the sparsest of accompaniments for the vocals, you immediately feel yourself holding your breath and leaning closer to the speakers. Her delivery is hushed, almost whispered. It's almost impossible to catch all of the words, but there are layers of meaning and feeling beyond mere words.
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The tracks move gracefully and drift into one another, and at times the music's barely there. Yet Merz, for all of the fragility she conveys, retains a sense of poise, of control. It's this same presence that prevents the darker, bleaker moments – and there are many, with 'Pray for a Sunny Day' being far from bright and 'Skeletons' being a subtly brooding piece – from becoming overtly depressing. Even while she breathes introspectively 'what have I done wrong?' over a low drone on 'The Patterns of Your Face', the sheer beauty of the delivery is uplifting in itself.
Proving that intensity doesn’t necessarily have to derive from pace or volume, ‘Without the World’ reaches the parts other albums don’t even know exist. Nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Birds of Passage on MySpace
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