The Love-Birds, furry young freaks from San Francisco, draw their music from the well of fifty years of jingling jangling guitars, almost invariably played by laid back white men with messy hair wearing slightly scruffy clothing. Nothing wrong with that. I've been listening to this kind of thing for over thirty five years and it still works for me. At least for the most part!
Where The Love-Birds start from apparently is their undisguised hero worship of all-things Teenage Fanclub. Appropriately, debut album In the Lover's Corner, (which came out at the end of May), was mastered by that band's Norman Blake with production duties divided up between The Skygreen Leopards Glen Donaldson and Kelley Stoltz.
Given that kind of set of collaborators, it's not altogether a surprise the way In the Lover's Corner sounds the way it does. In fact it's all not so very far away from a dream Roger McGuinn might have had back in 1966. Love-Birds may be aware of things that have happened since; Flamin' Groovies, Big Star, R.E.M, Dinosaur. Jr, Teenage Fanclub and others, but fundamentally any song on here might have featured on Turn,Turn,Turn or Fifth Dimension with only the most minor stylistic tweaks and adjustments.
So though The Love-Birds see the world through a refracted lens where Punk and Grunge have happened as well as Folk Rock and have had at least some impact on the ingredients in their mix, fundamentally they veer towards the latter time and mindset rather than the former. It's not, after all a crime. Teenage Fanclub followed the same route after all fairly early on in their own careers, just as soon as they'd got all of that feedback out of their systems.
In the Lover's Corner will never stand your world on its head. It has exactly the opposite intention. It wants to offer you eleven melodic and heartfelt Indie guitar songs that are slightly lovelorn in terms of their sentiments but never exactly heartbroken. The Love-Birds. in the jingle jangle morning they'll come following you.
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