In the infinite list of crap band names I Used To Be A Sparrow must rank fairly high and tends to put you off before you've heard a single note of the music.
IUTBAS are a duo from Sweden, although one of the two (Andrea Caccese) was born in Italy.
Caccese also moonlights as Songs For The Sleepwalkers while his musical partner Dick Pettersson is in an alt-rock group In These Woods and has a solo project Arrow Meet Francis.
Apparently the soft spot for sparrows derives from the fact that the pair see these birds as fragile, delicate creatures in a big, bad world.
At the push, this could be metaphor for the eleven songs on their debut album where the 'bad' world doesn't get much of the look in.
IUTBAS is also a lyric for the single Life Is Good, a perfectly nice but perfectly forgettable slice of jangly indie-pop.("we move like sparrows in the Spring" they coo).
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None of the other ten tracks are quite as catchy as this one but all are melodic tunes prompted by a similarly optimistic mood.
I can appreciate that these are bright, cheerful songs but I never get a real sense of where their hopeful disposition is coming from and where it is supposed to take me.
Lovers On The Moon takes the romantic idealism into the universe while titles like Cambodia, Copenhagen and Alaska suggest a geographical origin for their contentment.
But, then again, on Alaska one of the lines is "I know what I'm looking for, and it's not here" and this pretty much also sums up how I feel about this record.
And I don't like sparrows much either!
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