In Flight
Just six months old, with an album in the works, Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk remains relatively unknown even in its native Kansas City. While still pecking out its niche, the group has been making stylishly haunting but ultimately optimistic music. The act started as a rambunctious and experimental “noise project,” with guitarist Drew Gibson (previously from Darling at Sea) and former Depressors drummer Josh Riepe banging around in a nondescript local shed. Eventually, Baby Birds added weight with keyboard and percussion player Isaac Ahloe. The Jón Birgisson-like vocals of Jameson Piedimonte fill out the group’s impressive, original sound.
Having absorbed influences such as Broken Social Scene and Appleseed Cast, the band members continue to hone an eerie, heavily rhythmic body of songs that somehow maintain soft edges. This, say the artists, is a balancing act.
“Sigur Ros’ Uptown concert this spring brought tears to my eyes, and we’re all huge fans of [Radiohead’s] Kid A,” Gibson explains. “But there is enough upset music in the world — we’re trying to make something a little happier, a little more gleeful.” Most inspired by seeing folks dance and smile at live shows, the group does not reduce its music to droning electronica or straight-up dance rock.
Walking this genre-less knife edge is risky but rewarding — typically a defining time for any young band. “We’re sort of chameleons right now,” Gibson says. He notes that the group plays in a range of venues to a variety of audiences. Because Piedimonte owns a share in the Icehouse, for example, the quartet practices regularly on its stage. Sometimes, Gibson says, “We go ahead and play the show on an unbooked night, without promotion, and just sort of catch people off guard — which is nice, since we get heard by diverse audiences.”
Touring from one Midwestern town to another, the band plots an ambitious future. The plan: Record what the guys hope will be a seven- or eight-song EP in August. And Baby Birds wants to bring its live shows to an audience that Gibson calls “typically ignored by local groups”: the people who hang out in suburban venues away from culturally hip downtowns.
Where they might land after they focus their sound into something more distinct remains to be seen. But the band’s lovely, lingering music is worth catching now.
