First Impressions: desert person by Sidney Bird

Arizona-based Sidney Bird makes what she calls “cactus pop,” which is to mainstream pop music as spaghetti westerns are to Hollywood westerns. The analogous reasoning doesn’t mean her songs are thornier than the norm, however, or recorded in the Spanish desert. Ennio Morricone sports no credits. Rather, her music reflects the canyons, rock formations, and wide-open spaces of the Sonoran Desert. Soaring melodies and syncopating rhythms co-mingle on the plain, while Bird’s expressive vocals fly high one moment and dip low the next.

To extend the metaphor: A slow-rolling storm can be seen and heard in the distance. Lighting explodes from darkened clouds, which stretch across the horizon. Faint thunder rumbles and booms, smacks but can’t crack the sky. Such stuff is part and parcel of many relationships, be they familial, platonic or romantic. Families fight, friendships wither, and love fades. But so, too, is this: storms pass—families come together, friendships form, and love blooms. Such is the stuff of desert people.

The 10-track set opens in fine fashion with “hey cowboy,” which bucks like a bronco while spinning both fantasy and reality about a potential relationship. The title track tames the mood while promising a life, not a night, with another; it’s a sweet vow. Another highlight is “learning to love what I have,” in which Bird comes to terms with want, need and the in-between, and essentially articulates a mindful approach to materialism. Yearning for more has become something of a national pastime, with the obsession over possessions doing little but adding clutter to one’s home.

“something I’ll never know,” on the other hand, delves into clutter of another kind, i.e. the dysfunction that roils some families. “Mean Girl,” for its part, revisits the impairments found within some high school and college cliques, which express themselves with cruelty and disdain. “It’s hard enough out there in the real world,” Bird sings.

desert person is, in a sense, an emotional salve for such things. “purple showers,” for instance, embraces the Prince notion of the color plum. Over top an acoustic guitar, she muses of washing away the violence of everyday life by taking purple showers before inviting us to join her in the lavender mist. “Secret,” too, is an affective song, this one on friendship. “butterfly in conflict” ends things on an uptempo note: “I don’t want to hurt no one but I don’t want to hurt no more,” she confides.

All in all, the album—Bird’s third—is a pure delight. It’ll be available to stream from all the usual suspects this Friday.