The collective Bellbird play improvised jazz and, in announcing their second album, attempt to explain their own sound – which might suggest that The Call is a cerebral and impenetrable record. (Some clichés do, after all, fulfil themselves.) Yet anyone who yields to the album’s eight pieces will find themselves caught in a maelstrom. Many bands would envy the rhythmic propulsion of »Eternity Perspective«.
Bellbird note that they have swapped the usual instrumental roles: the horns enter with the beats, and so on. You can hear that at certain moments, though what it ultimately amounts to is jazz, fusion and rock. When the title track increases its pace, everything unfolds according to clear patterns that submit to the overall sound. (The reversed roles may well be there, but this is nothing artists in the genre were not already doing in the 1970s.) It is less innovation than the quartet’s natural interplay that defines The Call.
Allison Burik, Claire Devlin, Eli Davidovici and Mili Hong bring their instruments together with precision and balance, shaping a shared atmosphere. It sounds less like a dusty jazz cellar than an expansive sonic landscape. When they speak of a collective voice in the press notes, that may be the one claim one readily accepts. In the end, the sound speaks for itself – and on a forceful album such as The Call, it leaves a mark.
The Call
