Arizona

Glowing Bird

 

 

Released: October 14, 2008
Label: Echo Mountain Records
Myspace: /arizonatheband

By: Jeff Han

Despite their name, Arizona, an indie rock band with splashes of folk in their psychedelic sound, actually hail from Brooklyn. Displaying keenness towards production, “Glowing Bird” is a grandiose and tight sounding album that frequently darts in sound from track to track. With some tracks like “Ghost” that sound like an indie folk hybrid with industrial music or “Otto the Eel” that starts off in a blare of psychedelic jam only to end in a peaceful acoustic slow down, Arizona best demonstrate their song writing skills when jumping in sudden directions, leaving their music engaging and interesting. Unfortunately, the album itself is largely uneven and album highlights like (the above mentioned) “Ghosts,” “Colors,” “Don’t Have The Body,” and the title track are diluted by lesser tracks like “Easily,” “The Fairly Light,” and a handful of drawn out songs that would have benefited from having a fair chunk cut out of them. Two EP’s in, “Glowing Bird” is the band’s first released LP and after listening to this album, the band would have aided itself more in cutting off the excess and releasing a stronger EP than a weaker album full of inconsistencies and moments that fall short of great.