The Birdwatcher’s Guide to Atrocity Review
It is not news that Alex is one of my most beloved friends in the world. Nor is it news that his band, Seeming, is my favorite band. These things are not separable. And as with all of his albums, this is one I saw coming together, giving my opinions on demos, agitating in favor of songs when Alex’s faith in them faltered, and generally giving my input and perspective, just as Alex has weighed in on countless bits of Last War in Albion and Cyberpunk: The Future That Was. I care too much about his work, in the wonderful, heady way that one cares about art that one truly loves. Anyway, he has a new album coming out on Friday,The Birdwatcher’s Guide to the Apocalypse. It is of course brilliant. You should buy it. At the very least, you should be sure to swing by your streaming service of choice and give it a listen. Four tracks are up now, the other six on Friday. Let’s talk about it some.
From day one, when talking about how he’d follow Sol, Alex said he was going to avoid going bigger, recognizing that simply always doubling down on epic grandeur was a trap. The third Seeming album, he was very clear, had to be smaller, tighter, and more intimate. And then, for quite a while… nothing. He didn’t really write any new songs. A few here and there, generally clever and interesting, but generally not so much small as lightweight, sounding more like Alex playing than Alex working on the next Seeming album. Which, fair enough. Sol is the sort of album you do that after.
And then one day, around two years ago, while I was having a bit of a night, he sent me something. Just a verse and a chorus. And as I always do when I get a message with a Dropbox link from Alex, I put down what I was doing and got myself to a decent speaker. And I started to listen. “Write the song you need to hear,” Alex sang. “And when you’ve done it show me how.” It was immediately interesting—urgent yet heartfelt. “Where I walked the day Amelia died is where you’ll find me now.”
And I broke. Amelia was Alex’s utterly beloved cat. (All of Alex’s cats are beloved.He has an EP of goofy songs about cats that you will never, ever get to hear, and it is the best thing he has ever done.) His wife had been making an idle comment about how churches should give out kitties, then hearing a cry and pulling her out from the inside of a truck’s wheelwell, a cat manifested from will and magic alone. I first cat-sit her all the way back in Florida during my PhD program after Alex, in a stunning and blessed coincidence, got a job at UF for a few years. Ithaca was the third city I did it in. She died just after Halloween my first year here.…