Bird haunts like a ghost trapped in purgatory. That’s most evident right from the start in “The Film,” a stormy, reflective ode that could soundtrack a disastrously somber story about death and the outward rattle of the afterlife. “It’s like that when you hurt someone,” she whispers through windswept lace curtains. Both a fragility and a strength echo throughout the song, fueling the rest of the record of abandon, redemption, peace, and time’s merciless pendulum punctuating existence’s natural transcendence. Bird (real name: Janie Price) split recording time among Nashville, Tuscany, and Austin—musical heritages that take root and allow Price to completely blossom with an array of colorful creativity.
Strings moan and quake, woven and baked into songs such as “The Boy and the Swan” and “How Soon is Now.” Then, a new track like “Winter Rose” burns like a thousand suns with a scorched, otherworldly luminescence that speaks to transition and finding home again. Whether that’s a literal home or simply regaining oneself as life tumbles from one season into the next, it’s a path we all trod. Price keeps the motor running in emotional pillars like “The Car,” “ROY,” and “Sunny Days,” a deceptively titled song that droops with the weight of living. “I won’t let anything destroy these sunny days,” she sings, aching strings mourning in giant droplets around her. Her resilience pokes through the arrangement, and even though the thunderstorm rages outside, her heart remains locked away.
“Things Get Broken” closes the record with a brutal volatility that sinks its teeth into the veins. “Things get broken, and we just say it’s fine,” she pulls back the curtain. When life collapses, we human beings tend to cloud the truth behind rays of sunshine that ultimately do more damage than accepting reality.
Bird’s Held Here Together speaks to the commonalities of the human experience. We all endure brokenness, hopelessness, confusion, separation, and desperation. Those things should connect us, but instead, they serve as ever-widening divides that eventually rip us to shreds. “We are amongst the overgrown,” Price sighs in “Havana Garden,” a collaboration with Jane Ellen Bryant. Rose-tinted strings swirl behind them, instilling in the listener a sense of calm not unlike aloe on the skin.
Bird’s Held Here Together is out now.
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