Birds Flying Backwards Find Their Resolve on ‘If I Ever Needed Someone’ Ahead of Debut Album ‘Lovebirds’
London’s Birds Flying Backwards’ songs stretch out, settle in, find their own weather. So it makes sense that ‘If I Ever Needed Someone’, out February 23 on Real Love Recording Co., doesn’t go for the obvious gut punch.
The track is the last preview before their debut album ‘Lovebirds’ lands March 11, and it feels like the point where the lights come back on after a long night. Clear-eyed. Acoustic guitar and banjo braid together over a rhythm section and piano flickering at the edges. It’s folk at heart, though the band’s psych leanings still hum underneath….
Joe and India trade lines and then meet in the middle, their harmonies worn-in and unforced. There’s a steadiness to the way they sing this one. You believe them.
“‘If I Ever Needed Someone’ is about finding yourself after heartbreak, and the resoluteness and self-assuredness that it takes to move on. Taking cues from Cut Worms, Daniel Romano and Wilco, it shifts the record from loss towards resolve – the moment when the dust finally settles.”
That shift matters. Earlier singles circled the ache; this one stands up straight. You can hear it in the arrangement, which resists clutter. Everything has space. The band recorded ‘Lovebirds’ live across four days earlier this year…
The single was mixed by Joe Wyatt at Abbey Road Studios, whose past work includes The Smile and The Beatles Anthologies, and mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk, known for collaborations with Kevin Morby, Drugdealer, John Andrews and The Yawns, and Arthur Russell. You can hear that lineage in the warmth of the final cut. Nothing glossy. Just air around the instruments and room for the vocals to breathe.
To mark the release, the six-piece will play The Shacklewell Arms on February 23, before heading to Berlin Folk Festival on March 14 alongside Drugdealer and The Mystery Lights. It’s a steady climb for a group that started as childhood friends and family orbiting songwriter JR Sanders, and slowly grew into something bigger than the sum of its parts.
‘Lovebirds’ isn’t a concept album in the heavy-handed sense, but it does circle one idea from different angles. Romantic love, friendship, family, the bruises left behind, the work of learning how to stay open. The band describe it as “about love as something powerful and necessary. It can be heartbreaking and life-affirming at the same time, and it’s something worth protecting.”
Headline photo: Dessy Baeva
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