Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk returns to the nest

Given Lawrence’s college-town status, it makes sense that so many bands decamp for bigger burgs in order to reach larger audiences. Sometimes, as is the case of former local act Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk, it just kind of happens.

“We would just stay here in New York from time to time on tour, and then somehow we just realized we all lived here,” says guitarist and singer Oscar Allen Guinn by phone. “I’m not entirely sure exactly how that happened. At some point, I realized I knew every single bartender at the Replay Lounge, and that was when I had to go.”

Baby Birds’ latest, Burritos, came out via Fire Talk Records and Lillerne Tapes in March. The tale of its recording and release is a sinuous one due to the band’s members being scattered across the country.

“It was for a year straight — like, from August to August,” says singer and guitarist Drew Gibson of the recording process for Burritos. “I don’t think we were a band for a minute, and then I was living in Chicago, and then we made another record and it came out.”

“And then, it took, like, another year to come out or something,” Guinn says. “We would’ve happily had it come out sooner, but for a little while, Luke [Namee, drums] went back to California, Drew was in Chicago, and I was in New York, so we couldn’t really figure out how to put it out. Then we did Kill the Fuzz, which came out before Burritos but was recorded after it, just to do something real fast.”

“And that was with a different lineup,” Gibson interjects.

Given Baby Bird’s recording history, lineup changes should come as no surprise. While the band’s been going for quite a few years now, certain members come and go with frequency, although their appearances might be rather irregular.

“There’s been people where the two shows they played with us were, like, six years apart or something like that,” Gibson says of some musicians. The majority of Burritos was recorded by Gibson, Guinn and Namee, but that sense of openness in the lineup allows the likes of Gaurav Bashyakarla of CVLTS to play drums on a track.

“I don’t know if he remembers,” Guinn says with a laugh.

The layered sound of Burritos is a delicate mix — there’s a lot of music, but it never feels dense or cluttered. In the wrong hands, a song like the six-minute “Little Village” could feel claustrophobic, but it orbits the planet in the upper atmosphere.

“We spent a long time working on the arrangements to make sure all the melodies and harmonies weren’t crowding one another,” Gibson says of the year-long process of bringing Burritos to life.

“Easily as much time mixing as spent recording in the first place,” Guinn says. “We all really decided to put a lot of intention into it. We spent a lot of time planning how to do it in one room, months before we even started recording. All three of us had a really strong idea of what the songs were before we started recording anything.”

I ask if the Baby Birds core trio wanted to work things out live, in order to see how the music of Burritos sounded in a concrete way, but then really made it happen in the studio.

Gibson laughs and agrees, but with a caveat.

“If by studio, you mean bedroom,” he says.

That all being said, the chances of hearing Burritos live is pretty slim. Baby Birds are playing all-new songs, although the lineup playing those shows is the same as the one that recorded the album.

“It probably sounds most like the next record we’re working on,” Guinn says. “We already recorded one after Burritos, then we’re working on one that will come out after that. So it probably sounds the most like that.”

Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk
with Scammers, Bath Consolidated,
and Lil Toughies
Friday, June 24
The Brick

Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk
with the Travel Guide and Westerners
Saturday, June 25
Replay Lounge