• Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
  • Search Site

Polari Magazine

  • Home
  • Up Front
    • Editorial
    • Clementine: The Living Fashion Doll
    • Polari Safari
    • WTF? Friday
    • Bulletin Board
    • Polari Facts
  • Features
    • Interviews
    • Features
    • Gallery
    • Opinion
    • Heroes & Villains
  • Community
    • Oral Histories
    • Coming Out Stories
    • Relationships
    • IDAHO
    • LGBT History Month
    • Blogs
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • Film and Television
    • Music
    • Stage
    • Visual Arts
    • Classics: Books
    • Classics: Film and Television
    • Classics: Music
  • About
    • About Polari Magazine
    • Contributors
    • Contact

You are here: Polari Magazine / Music / Wallis Bird • Wallis Bird

Wallis Bird • Wallis Bird

  • Wallis Bird 3rd album cover
07 Mar 2012 / Comments Off / in Music/by Little Bastard

Wallis Bird ★★★★★
Wallis Bird
41:18 min • Rubyworks • March 12, 2012
………………………………………………………………………………………….

Few people would self title an album to make a statement, but that is exactly what Irish born singer/songwriter Wallis Bird has done with her third album. Recorded in part in a communist radio station in Berlin, a haunted house on a cliff in Ireland during the worst snowstorm for 30 years, and in her own flat in Brixton during the London riots, the album is every bit as wild, unpredictable and diverse as Wallis herself. So all we can expect from Wallis Bird’s 3rd studio album is Wallis herself, and on this album we see all of her.

As a child, Wallis had an accident with a lawnmower and lost all her fingers. The doctors managed to sew four back on, meaning she has to play her guitar upside down with her left hand, and as she can’t play written chords she has to write her own, resulting in a raw folk sound unlike any of her peers. I myself am a sucker for a good opening line. So when I pressed play on Wallis Bird and she proclaimed,

You don’t know shit – and ain’t it better not to know it?

I was hooked. It’s an opening line with balls, which can only be a good thing. What follows is a haunting track, beautifully produced, in places conjuring up Ani DiFranco and in others James Blake. In fact, the echoing, ghostly backing vocals and claps in the second verse, alongside the beautiful acoustic guitar made me wish the opening track would go on forever. This is late night folk, in a dark room with your window cracked. We’re teased with reverb, vocoders and electronics, and just as I want more than a tease we’re thrown headlong into ‘I Am So Tired Of That Line’, an up tempo blast on stomping folk that shakes me. It has a groove that recalls Melissa Etheridge and Ani DiFranco, and it packs the first proper punch on the album.

The single ‘Encore’ follows, and despite being the most commercial song on the album, making it an obvious single, it still manages to thump its way through its pop chorus before her raspy vocals take the reigns to ride us to the end. It’s worth mentioning that fellow Irish Indie Electro singer/songwriter Robotnik has also remixed this song in a version exclusive to her official website, transforming it into a Summer anthem. It floats above the original while retaining some of its natural bombastic edge mixed in with some sweet ambient electronica.

Take my hand ,
This worlds gone mad,
And I’m trying to salvage an existence.

She sings on the brilliant ‘Take Me Home’, and the track’s frenetic climax sounds like Delores O’Riorden being produced by Patrick Wolf. With its beautiful melody and picky acoustic beginnings, it’s in a fight for the best track on the album. This is my kind of folk. Her voice is raw, the soundscape is intoxicating and the song builds to a heady folk-dance hybrid. Then,

Sometimes screaming keeps me breathing…

we’re told on the thrashing ‘Ghosts Of Memories’, another song that builds and falls with acoustic verses and a chorus that rocks harder than any folk singer I have ever heard. Having seen Wallis live, this is no surprise. She plays an acoustic guitar with the force of someone in a rock band playing an electric guitar, and is every inch the rock star during performance, yet every drop the charming, honest, hippy folk singer in-between. Seeing her support South American instrumentalists Rodrigo y Gabriela at Brixton Academy was an exhilarating experience, but also gave me an insight into her influences when she proclaimed “I was here for the Rob Zombie gig … was anybody else?”. As the room fell deathly silent, apart from the people who were already rudely talking through her set, she seemed to realise that her eclecticism was lost on the positively secretariat crowd and muttered, “Obviously not”. It was the moment I realised Wallis and I were probably the only people in the room who knew who Rob Zombie was. It also made me realise why the electric nature of her music, even played live, was somewhat lost on the audience she was performing for.

In fact, as each song on the album develops you realise its impossible to categorise the sound of it. The influences are so far reaching that, while at times her feet are firmly in folk, the album never stays in one place long enough to feel like a folk album. ‘Who’s Listening Now’ is firmly in Ani DiFranco territory, whilst ‘But I’m Still Here, I’m Still Here’ has echoes of Jacques Brel, not only in its beautifully melancholic lyrics, but also its lilting waltz melody invoking an otherworldly twinkle. It is a song with a sophisticated core and with lyrics to match which leaves you feeling haunted. ‘Feathered Pocket’ is more what I would expect from commercial acoustic folk and makes me think of spring, Sixpence None The Richer and episodes of Dawson’s Creek – none of which I consider to be a bad thing.

The album closes with ‘Polarise’, a song that again stumbles into late night folk. The guttural cry of Wallis’ voice is once again unleashed and at one point breaks out into a distorted celestial choir, making this album closer both raw and innovative. The hidden outro that follows, with a piano and a rotary dial telephone plus the sounds of a storm and somebody quietly playing a saw, reminds me of both ‘Count To 6 And Die’ by pop-metal genius Marilyn Manson in its unsettling beauty, and also Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley’s haunting burlesque concept album Evelyn Evelyn. In fact, it’s this unconventional production throughout the record that captures the visceral nature of Bird’s live performance.

Like all great albums, listening to Wallis Bird feels like a journey. It’s a tumultuous and epic 41 minute journey I have taken repeatedly, and will happily take again. I actually find it hard to believe that until a few days ago I hadn’t heard of Wallis Bird, but from her charming, energetic live performance to her late night folk-rock third album, she’s someone I will be keeping an eye on in future.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
Tags: anni difranco, patrick wolf, robotnik, wallis bird

Related Posts

Did you like this entry?
Here are a few more posts that might be interesting for you.
Related Posts
Podcast #002
Patrick Wolf • One Night in Heaven
Extra material – interview with Patrick Wolf
In This Shirt • The Irrepressibles
Polar Magazinei 2012 Retrospective. Part 3: Music 2012 Retrospective 3: Music
Sundark And Riverlight • Patrick Wolf
The Lion’s Roar • First Aid Kit
The Insurrectionist
The Architect: An Interview with Wallis Bird

Search Polari

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

About Polari Magazine

Polari Magazine is an LGBT arts and culture magazine that explores the subculture by looking at what is important to the people who are in it. It’s about the lives we lead, not the lifestyles we’re supposed to lead.

Its content is informed & insightful, and features a diverse range of writers from every section of the community. Its intent is to help LGBT readers learn about their own heritage and to sustain a link between the present and the past.

Polari is designed to nurture the idea of community, whether that be social and political, or artistic and creative. It is your magazine, whether you want to read it, or whether you want to get involved in it, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer.

Polari Magazine is all these: it's a gay online magazine; it's a gay and lesbian online magazine; it's an LGBT arts and culture magazine. Ultimately, it is a queer magazine.

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

Twitter

Tweets by @PolariMagazine

Archive

  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
© Copyright - Polari Magazine - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at
  • scroll to top
  • Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Website Privacy & Cookies