Deary - Birding (2026)      

Review by Marcy Donelson:
Across their first two EPs, London's deary allured with a blurry, romantic style that navigated harsh, dissonant textures and an echo-washed, more beat-based sound. With their debut album, Birding, the original duo of singer Rebecca "Dottie" Cockram and multi-instrumentalist Ben Easton bring in a dedicated drummer in Harry Catchpole to help present a more streamlined blend of shoegaze and Cocteau Twins-inspired dream pop that incorporates earlier trip-hop influences alongside more agile rhythms. At the same time, many of Dottie's lovesick lyrics have been traded for subjects like nature, time, and loss, although the group's trademark sense of longing remains a through line. Birding opens with the melancholy "Smile," a relatively quiet entry that's essentially about yearning itself. Its shimmery, giddy climax, dark, gritty bassline, and insistent snare set the stage for much of what's to come on an album where lyrics are often an afterthought to dreamy, ethereal vocal melodies. Songs with titles like "Seabird" and "Baby's Breath" (and companion track "Gypsophila") further expound on the album's cinematic qualities, while deary bring their sonic universe in closer for the nearly acoustic "Garden of Eden" ("Can you see her body bleeding?"), which nevertheless offers no shortage of mood and atmosphere. Although it's hard to pick highlights from an album that works together as a transportive whole, "Alma," whose title is taken from the Spanish word for "soul," represents a divine, driving dream pop, as the singer addresses her younger self ("Can I walk along the shore with you?"). At the end, Birding delivers listeners back to populated, earthbound spaces with the warm piano and wind chimes of its instrumental title track. It makes for an exquisite and fitting debut for the Bella Union label, which is run by Cocteau Twins' Simon Raymonde. — allmusic.com

Track List:
01. Smile
02. Seabird
03. Baby's Breath
04. Gypsophila
05. Blue Ribbon
06. Garden Of Eden
07. Alma
08. No Sweeter Feeling
09. Terra Fable
10. Alfie
11. Birding


Media Report:
Genre: dream-pop, shoegaze
Origin: London, UK  
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.3.0 (UTC 2013-05-26)


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