Bluebird, Myrtle Avenue: REVIEW

Bluebird, Myrtle Avenue (Baby Horse)

As the years pass and keep on getting stranger, we will always have a harvest of fresh musical talent to chronicle the anxieties, darkness and apprehensions of a generation. I don’t know when it became so unbearable to just continue existing as a 20 or 30 something, but Bluebird’s Myrtle Avenue — an experiment in alt-country, Canadiana and hints of psychedelic shoegaze — is a damn near perfect take on the experience. Drug use, death, redemption, loss, it’s all for the taking on Myrtle Avenue, led by guitarist/vocalist Dan Beasy. The instrumentation is dripping with swagger — slide guitar, subtle saloon keys, acoustic shuffles, smooth bass, distorted Hank Williams III guitar lines, tight drumming — but it’s the lyrical content that makes Myrtle Avenue shine. Having written this album primarily while he was living in Montreal’s Fattal Lofts, an artist hub that could be called heaven inside of hell, Beasy’s storytelling is so visceral, so raw (reminiscent of Ian Noe) that you can’t help but disappear with him into this colourful, wonderful trip. 8/10 Trial Track: “Leviathan”

For more on Bluebird, please visit the band’s website.

This review was originally published in the April issue of Cult MTL.

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