“…music from the past that hasn’t happened yet…”
That’s how Finish downtempo act The Gentlemen Losers describe their laid-back brand of musical ambience. And that’s the lens through which I’ve been viewing their super lo-fi beauty of a single, titled “The Good Bird Singin’ in the Twilight Tree.”
Admittedly, I’ve been thinking about this all week … or more like meditating on it. I encountered the description on their website, while I was researching for this post. It appeared on their homepage, downplayed in small type over a lonely image of an empty cloud-covered beach at dusk. There’s lifeguard towers, volleyball nets, and those tall fin-shaped flags they fill with advertisements. But it’s all empty, cold, and desolate, exposed for darkness, and most importantly, existing outside of time and place. Sure, it’s a beach, but where and when, I couldn’t tell you.
It’s also the most accurate depiction/description I can conjure for what “The Good Bird” feels like. There’s a mysterious intangibility to the whole affair, just like the aforementioned statement says. It seems of an imagined past that has yet to occur, a dream wrapped in a premonition of a memory of an experience that could exist, despite never having existed before. Strange and bewildering stuff …
Sound-wise, “The Good Bird” bathes in an organic wash of retro-future nostalgia, almost electronic in its spatial qualities, yet steeped in natural warm acoustics. There’s warbly horns, analog keys, and echoey vocal distortions, verging on decipherable, never drifting into detachment or disorientation. It all moves at a comfortable crawl, steadily-paced in a calm rhythmic dirge, a soothing elegy of twilight ambience and chilled solace. “The Good Bird” doesn’t feel lonely, but it does have a reminiscent longing.
And I might add, it bears a delightfully quirky title, filled with all types of weird and wonderful imagery, almost as if lifted from a fairytale or fable, one that’s not too fantastic, yet not too grounded either.
Prepare to relax, recline, and drift into temporal meditation with The Gentlemen Losers’ “The Good Bird Singin’ in the Twilight Tree.” Enjoy!
“The Good Bird Singin’ in the Twilight Tree” from the 2017 album “Permanently Midnight.”
And here’s their official music video, with abstracted nostalgia filtered through futuristic analog. Almost feels like a past that hasn’t happened yet …
