PRESS

Rolling Stone Dec/Jan 2010. Underlining by Jo's mum

"Three powerful ladies and a guy with a vertical haircut, feeling angry enough to aurally crowbar you. It's a mongrel terrier that imagines Wipers being introduced to Sonic Youth by your contrary Kyuss-loving cousin. Older tracks like "Sweet Sweet Cones" seduced me but their new album "Set My Bones" tears some new arsehole."

-Steph Hughes, JMAG and Triple J's Home and Hosed show. 

SET MY BONES – Butcher Birds 

Okay, I confess. I’m in love with this CD. Love at first listen. Expect no objectivity. This is how listening to a record is supposed to make you feel. I’ll just babble on, shall I? Of course it gets five bottles. Love means giving five bottles.
This really could be the best rock album to come out of Brisbane since “I’m Stranded.” I know. Everyone has been saying that about the Hits. I said it too after much prompting. I’m sure Stacey Coleman doesn’t mind which disc is better because she is in both bands. That’s right. Apparently she has been involved in the production of the two best rock albums to come out of Brisbane since “I’m Stranded” and nobody knows who the hell she is.
Good god, if I don’t watch out, the hyperbole is going to go clear of the scales here. Who are Merenoise records and how come they have such good taste? What has been bubbling away under the warm Queensland sun? Where did this sudden renaissance come from? Why wasn’t I told?
The Butcher Birds might be a little too grunge for some tastes. They kind of sound like what Veruca Salt could have sounded like if Veruca Salt could maintain the quality of their singles over an entire album. They sound like Veruca Salt may have sounded if they’d spent more time listening to Sonic Youth and the Velvet Underground instead of Led Zeppelin... only better. Courtney Love should have listened to this before making the new Hole album instead of whatever dross she has playing in her crib.
Guitars veer from caustic bursts through feedback and onto opiate swirls. Bass and drums pound like cocaine driven hearts. The songs are immediate and tantalising. I had the CD on and I wanted to start reviewing it but I couldn’t stop listening to it. It caught me in the headlights. In real life, butcher birds hang their prey from the thorns of trees for later consumption. I guess they got their name right, then.
I could keep on raving like an idiot but that would serve no purpose. You should just listen to the CD. It’s good. If the Barman hadn’t sent it to me for review, I would have bought this with my own cash money. Did I tell you that I love this CD?
***** (5 Stars) Bob Short, I94-Bar

BUTCHER BIRDS

SET MY BONES

There is something different brewing on the streets of Brisbane, and for every jangly pop band, there is an equal and opposite reaction with a guitar sonic assault. 

But pumping up the volume doesn't mean anything unless you have the tunes to match, and Butcher Birds certainly have those. 

This three-girls-one-guy outfit deliver on the promise of their first EP with a cracking collection, sweetening the tough love of the seething Amp (written and sung by drummer Donovan Miller) and frantic Blood Message with tunes like the dreamy, hypnotic Bare Arms and the intriguing Yoko Coma. It's a slow-burning tune where shards of guitars provide the counterpoint to Stacey Coleman's vocal plea to "set my bones and make them straight."

The opening song, The Gate, focuses all of their strengths into one diamond-hard package, from the throbbing opening chords to Jacinta Walker's ominous guitar shapes, pummeling drums and Coleman's stirring vocal about love out on the edge. 

Millions and Dig Me! are playful, shouty pop-punk (as it was when pop-punk was good, not today's disposable variety), and Stone Fox, co-written by Screamfeeder's Kellie Lloyd, cranks up the decibels to speaker-shredding intensity. 

Guitar feedback? The howls of rage-or maybe it's joy- conjured on the album's concluding Tipp City would do Sonic Youth proud. 

Noel Mengel, Courier Mail

Butcher Birds

Set My Bones

This is a shiny beast of an album. It arrives in camouflage, but those hand-drawn skulls on the cover would perhaps be more at home on a heavy metal fan’s high-school folder, because this disc is unashamedly grown up. Set My Bones is clever, heavy pop, which wears a glossy sheen over a drunken sweaty snarl, and gets the balance just right. Accomplished without being overdone, the overall impression is of good ideas being channeled via some pretty fierce independence.It kicks off with ‘The Gate’, a stretched-out tease of an opening. Guitars build tension before the whole thing kicks in with a crash, paving the way for some breathy, and frankly quite steamy vocals, from Stacey Coleman. ‘Bare Arms’ takes a different angle, with shifting riffs and multi-layered voices keeping the whole thing as blurred as an afternoon on codeine and gin. Judging from the lyrics, which seem to deal with the aftermath of a break up, numb probably isn’t a bad way to be. When I was a teenager, the phrase ‘Stone Fox’ was the kind of self-conscious Americanism only used by 15-year-old wannabes. Here, it’s a grinding, chugging stream of sarcasm that cuts loose with self-loathing halfway through.The highlight of the album comes late in the day, with the distinctly radio-unfriendly ‘Yoko Coma’, which runs for seven-and-a-half minutes. It’s hard to discern what it’s about – even after listening to it 30 times. Is it really as simple as the opening line: “The thing that makes me want to stay here is the sound of your guitar”? The “set my bones” line that give the album its title is in the mix here too. Perhaps a lyric sheet is in order for next time? Regardless, while always being anchored by solid bass, the tune stretches itself up and down a few fretboards, across a couple of fuzz pedals and straight into your ear.The only thing here that doesn’t quite hit the mark is ‘Amp’, where drummer Donovan Miller takes over on vocals. Without wanting to make an issue of the female element here, you can find boys singing straight-up grunge-rock pretty easily elsewhere. Recent live sightings show that on stage, the Butcher Birds have more rough edges, more agreeably grimy punch, than on record. But if you missed their previous EP, Set My Bones is a great place to start. 

Trevor Block, Mess+Noise