Woodpcker Wooliams - The bird school of being human
Woodpecker Wooliams, a.k.a singer-songerwriter Gemma Williams has an unnerving and often breaking tremolo voice, other than being a singer, bee keeper and maternity nurse. She tells us she's a Shaman and that part of her training to become a shaman involves an overnight burial. If that sentence lost you be prepared for a headache. Williams moved to Devon from Brighton, started waitressing and hired a harp The Bird School of Being Human is the product of her wanting to move away from her typical, saccharine twee-folky sound Williams found herself moving towards a mental, "horrible, distorted noise" in an almost compulsive effort to change her music.
The album opens with red kite which starts as a soft, slow acoustic piece, lacking a little structure and pace it stops and starts with vocal styles changing and harp suddenly appearing and disappearing and as the song approaches it's end, it picks up a distorted background noise, that suddenly breaks from song to what sounds like somebody messing around on a drum kit while somebody else throws a tape deck into a blender. The second song Gull is much the same as the first but with mild drums and feedback in the background, it's a lot easier to listen to at first until she audibly, unmistakably decides to impersonate a sheep and baa's at which point I found myself lost again and wondering just what I was listening to.
Sparrow starts entirely electronic, dropping the guitar and harp from the previous songs, the bass drops and Williams starts singing, I could actually see this working fairly well as a club track, if little else. Its well-structured her voice isn't as stressed and the lyrics make a lot more sense. The next track on the album is Magpie, this song starts in much the same fashion as second, more minimalist on the instruments for the majority of the song, except a broken sounding bass drum being tapped periodically.Crow Features a far slower and darker song than the rest of the album has shown so far and a little over halfway through the electronic music & effects on her voice take over to produce what seems like a scene in an action film where the protagonist goes temporarily deaf and all noises take a tinny, unnerving and unpleasant sound. Dove is a harp orientated, slow track which at first sounds quite pleasant until Williams sheep impersonation makes a return and spoils the song. The album closes with Hummingbird which opens with slow, deep vocal humming and takes a couple of minutes to pick up and much like the rest of the album, it slowly descends into disease and insanity as a harem of other noises join it until it all fades into distorted, popping & crackling feedback.
This is easily the weirdest album Ive ever listened to Sparrow being the only song on the album that seems to make any sense or is easy to listen to, the instruments detract from her somewhat shrill voice so it's hard to make out the lyrics, it seems a little like there's been far too much creative freedom and far too little creative substance. If you want folk music mixed with electronica/club music turn to the professionals like the Peatbog Faeries or Monster Ceilidh Band. This was one genre crossing exercise that crashed and burned.