I don’t know where Lovebyrd has been hiding, but their debut album, the self-titled Lovebyrd, is being released by Hairy Records on my birthday and it already sounds like they’ve been around for years. They have a simplistic, mellow, laidback feeling to their music; shoegaze tripping through wave after wave of reverberation and jangling shimmering percussion on the entirety of their 10 track debut album. “Spinning Around”, which was previously available on Lovebyrd’s EP cassette tape from the beginning of this year (2015), opens up Lovebyrd like the glistening psychedelic gates of some kind of paisley paradise. There’s a melodic, warm, enveloping melody that oozes out of your speakers and gunks up the needle, dripping from your pores and beading up on your skin like sweat before long. The angelic voice of Steffi Krauth is what really makes these tunes, minimalist sounds, and slowly shifting arrangements that comprise Lovebyrd standout. The dream-pop label drifts slowly up like smoke rising from a crumpled joint pursed in your lips, smoke exhaling from the undulating guitars that clamor and rattle in the distance of “We’re Shining Through”.
Although it was available on the cassette EP, I don’t know if they’re the same recordings – and either way it sounds just as at home on this angelic slab of wax as it did on the tape that preceded it. The abrupt end of ”We’re Shining Through” leads the listener directly into the echoing chambers of the third track, “Floating Up”. “Floating Up” is the first song on the LP not to be featured on the original EP tape, and you can tell straight away. The writing and composition are just a little less muddy, more concentrated, and absolutely gripping from the moment that it starts. The hollow cavernous walls of sound instantly recall the guitar work of The Byrds and Jefferson Airplane while also showing off Lovebyrd’s unabashed Tame Impala influences. There’s a very almost, dare I say it, Oasis vibe to “Floating Up” as well. It has that hazy Beatles-esque swagger that so very few people are able to conjure up without becoming either completely consumed or losing their sound in. Slithering through the finale of the song it’s hard to imagine why I haven’t heard anyone mention The Raveonettes in the same sentence as Lovebyrd before. The thundering fuzzy tentacles of sound that erupt from “Shot From The Sun” only help to reinforce this idea, the simplistic repetitive guitar line crunching and popping above the dreamy vocals and vibrating drum track. It’s interesting how well the combination of material originally written for the cassette EP and the stuff done specifically for this 12” work together. From: https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2015/11/lovebyrd-lovebyrd-2015-review.html
