Birds May Bite
"If Startled" CD (Egg White Thought)
This CD rules for approximately six seconds. For those six seconds, it is a warm, breathy rush of melodic indie pop from 1993. It reminds me of the Godrays, Velocity Girl, Fudge - every last one of the bands that focused on using guitar tones to create an atmosphere, yet still tried to shape the form of that atmosphere via hooks. At the end of that six seconds, the vocals kick in and the entire thing falls apart. It promptly downshifts from promising indie pop into bland, lilting, headache-inducing guitar rock. At about 23 seconds in, there was a brief flash of potential with a riff which sounded like it came from a Longshot song, but then the organs came in and the CD came out.