THE BUG CLUB - Rare Birds: Hour Of Song (Repress) - 2LP - Vinyl [OCT 4]

2LP - Black Vinyl. 47-songs long with a fully illustrated, 32-page book. 

After a live album (of new, one-off tracks) and an EP to get the year started at a leisurely pace, The Bug Club capped off 2023 with their second full-length album - an hour-and-a-bit long double LP called Rare Birds: Hour of Song. Now then, what could you possibly have to say that takes two records to spit out? Pay attention to this and learn. It's The Bug Club's Hex Enduction Hour. South Wales' Double Nickels On The Dime. It's The Faust Cycle for people with shorter attention spans. Their eighth release since joining forces with Bingo Records in 2020, 'Rare Birds...' is a culmination of a year spent relentlessly touring. But it's not one of those hackneyed road records. It's about birds, to an extent. Well, it is, and it isn't. And it is 47-songs long, featuring 23 Cutler-esque spoken-word tracks that weave through the music telling a surreal story to accompany the band’s usual witty, taut garage rock. Oh, and it comes with a fully illustrated, 32-page book.

Vocalist and guitarist Sam Willmett attempts to explain: “All the songs were written in our summer holiday lull before we went away to tour (debut album) Green Dream in F♯ last year. Then we picked the lucky winners to go on the album when we got home around Christmas. “We just wrote every day we were home, mostly in the garden. That’s probably why it's vaguely about birds. All the songs are in the order they were written apart from the last two which we swapped around. I only actually remember writing one 11 song, ‘Passionflower, Paperbacks and Woodlice’, which came about as I was sat by a passionflower when a woodlouse crawled over my paperback. I thought it looked and sounded nice. We wrote the wordy bits in one hit around the songs once the record was nearly done. One big story. We think the record is like a fall asleep relaxation tape with the cartoon ‘burd’ narrating and guiding you.”

Need to know more? Spare us an hour and four minutes. That's what we're asking of you here. It's a big ask, these days. But if you do, you'll find yourself entrenched in an immersive world of The Bug Club. The other records - with the sardonic and surreal, the riffs and the obsession with outer space - were a run up. With Rare Birds... Sam, Tilly and Dan have created an expansive environment in which we can all bask in a cocktail of garage rock, poetry, nonsense, wordplay, sentimentality and fuck-offs. Ivor Cutler's come round to play with Gordon Gano and Kimya Dawson in a semi-detached in Caldicot.

Tracklist: 

A1.        burds wurds - my first lie
A2.        Samuel Was Beautiful Tonight
A3.        burds wurds - for feeling
A4.        I Will Feel The Same
A5.        burds wurds - I think we'll go with this
A6.        Fully Clothed
A7.        burds wurds - the key
A8.        Marriage
A9.        burds wurds - shut my beak
A10.        Four Sisters

B1.        burds wurds - what's your sweet cereal?
B2.        Is This The Music You Like?
B3.        Can Ya Change A Thing Like This?
B4.        burds wurds - hot emptiness
B5.        We Can't All Play Saxophones
B6.        burds wurds - big gold medallion
B7.        Short and Round
B8.        burds wurds - louder than normal ha ha ha
B9.        passionflower, Paperbacks and Woodlice
B10.        burds wurds - the pantry flap
B11.        Blues Magicians

C1.        burds wurds - the big frog
C2.        Strawberry Season
C3.        Do It All Again
C4.        burds wurds - really nice
C5.        Drown Me Out
C6.        burds wurds - twelve surnames
C7.        One Big Heavy Person
C8.        burds wurds - more of a pretty turkish bookmark
C9.        Mister Do You Have The Time For Sittin?
C10.        burds wurds - fish tongue
C11.        In My Hour Of Song

D1.        The Loudest Violin
D2.        burds wurds - now we can move on
D3.        Antique Heirlooms
D4.        burds wurds - cubed up!
D5.        Cheap Linen
D6.        burds wurds - something small
D7.        Rare Birds
D8.        burds wurds - ready for living
D9.        Three Brians
D10.        burds wurds - from one rare bird
D11.        Wide Awake Forever
D12.        burds wurds - this story's ends