Pillowsnake - hmminBYRD (review)
A fizzy, fiery, and strangely catchy rock and pop album that fully embraces the rawness and freedom of internet music culture.
Score: 9/10
SoundCloud has changed alternative music at its core. No more geographically-based music genres, while cost-efficient recordings created a culture shaped by rawness, memes, and user-friendly site surfing. Musicians began to record and post songs on impulse, and listeners found them just as easily. While this movement is contrarian and counter-cultural, it actually keeps musicians in tune with current trends, the tastes of its listeners, and the new ideas on the horizon. In “hmminBYRD,” Pillowsnake embodies the down-to-earth quality and trend-setting ability of modern DIYism through blazing rock riffs, fluttering electronics, and cartoony pop melodies.
In “gabriela is the new skin,” a squeaky melody with the rapid flap of a hummingbird leads to one of the best rock riffs to come out of the RGV: a quiet/loud pattern in the same vain as Jay Z’s “99 Problems,” and Awolnation’s “Sail,” emulating the hip-hop swag and distortion, while maintaining the Pillowsnake quirkiness. Lyrically, it’s a love song about being fully integrated into each other, and perhaps a reference to the shedding of a snake. “I slept till I'm dead. Then I woke up inside your head. . . Don't look for my eyes. Gabriela is the new skin,” Jacob La Follette wails out through what sounds like a payphone hooked up to a guitar amp. The lo-fi harshness, eccentric melodies, and the simple, but passionate guitar solo make us question why love songs are usually soft and pretty, when they should be celebratory and intense.
“Pearls and Quotas” is an action-packed banger that criticizes quota-based policing, with an arena-rock guitar riff, hasty warped drums, and Pillownsnake sounding like a rabid version of Anthony Kiedis. With lines like “Didn't know island time meant you fuck with me. Didn't know island time meant I fuck with you,” the easygoing nature of a man harrassed by questionable policy turns to fierce conviction.
The theme switches again on “LOVE GAVE ME THE LUXERY OF TIME,” about a love turning daily life into a timeless world, but may also be about how finding true love saves someone time they would otherwise spend on impressing a potential partner: "Shower cap on my head. When I walk cross the room. Knowing this is my tomb.” It’s the most fun pop track of the album with summertime psychedelia you would normally find on an Animal Collective song. The ending has the most heartwarming moment when a lethargic slowdown truly turns to the “island time” of two lovers sitting in a breeze.
The closing track is the most minimal, yet harshest with a high-pitched melody zipping around. “Lament” may be a tough listen, but the madness works alongside lines about being a weird one-of-a-kind person and keeping it that way: “Will only have a singular, no plural form. Never jinx myself and bring a perfect storm. Never create unless I tear myself to shreds, and tear the new shreds.” It’s an appropriate final declaration of pride for Pillowsnake’s most personal release.
The experimental techniques may get compared to outsider musicians like Lil B, Daniel Johnston, and Captain Beefheart, but the record goes beyond noise elements and lo-fi charm. It’s a fully inspired and realized project, while the authenticity of its online roots give the album an alien sound that can be claimed everywhere and nowhere.
Score: 9/10
Listen to and purchase “hmminBRYD” here.
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