Magnificent Bird

Some nice Americans called Magnificent Bird are releasing an album this weekend. It's called Superdark Can Happen to Anyone. I can tell you that they mean it.

What is superdark? Sliding things, I think. Then stuck. Slurred stoppages. Some remembered party, some glorified bonfire really, in the middle of nowhere, some field or clearing, with cars and trucks pulled up around, and to stand by the fire is to lean into curtains of heat, your face ablaze even while your back is freezing, and so you turn, and keep turning, bone coated, these twisty tower poses of standing and drinking, not looking at the girls who aren't there, not beer sick about that, again, so that when you finally step away it's into a flickering half-nothingness, and then the dark fills right in, just like that, twenty feet into the field and you might as well have stepped into space, so hellishly cold and black it is, with that reflected laughter behind you, somewhere blonde thin and ropey, ghosts from some other planet. Step ahead not down. Hands out before you. Don't fall down.

That could be one thing it is. Maybe.

The only way to really know is to listen. Here's a video from one of the songs on the album, one that's just crushingly Awful. - Red Handed

Recorded over the past five years, this album is more attractive music from Norman’s vibrant music scene. Magnificent Bird’s core is a duo comprised of Nathan Lee Lofties (vocals/various instruments) and Tiffany Lynne Criswell (vocals/piano). They brought into their nest several other talented Norman musicians who play on most of the disc’s ten tracks. In a time when band press sheets are sometimes received listing only the players’ first names, the liner notes here include the personnel’s full first, middle and last names. It’s a nice touch that’s a throwback to another age, along with some aspects of Magnificent Bird’s sound. The music has a gentle and sophisticated sensibility that’s been called art rock in other decades.

Criswell’s soprano vocals for slightly macabre “The Married Woman” could be from early in the last century. All songs’ lyrics were written by Lofties and Criswell, but apparently not collaborating together. As the album’s title might suggest the content tends to the puzzlingly poetic. “Repeater” appears to have a theme of ancient deity worship punctuated by Stetson Chase Spivey’s very modern electric lead guitar passages. Last track “Don’t Call On Me” is my pick of the flock. It’s about a father disowning a son with references to shame and religion. There’s a power in not knowing if the son is homosexual, coward or traitor to his faith. Lofties’ sensitive vocal delivery contributes to the song’s magnificent mystery.

(Doug Hill) - The Norman Transcript