Tweak Bird/ Tweak Bird

Tweak Bird
Tweak Bird
(Souterrain Transmissions)

It was day two of the Great Escape and already festival psychosis had started to kick in. The sea air and the booze had conspired to leave me feeling distinctly peg-legged, and a shot of something strong was clearly needed.
"I think you'll find these two interesting Ric," murmured Paul Artrocker as two half-naked men walked on stage. "They've got this kind of falsetto vocal combined with a deep growl, and they're very, very heavy!" He then rubbed his hands together, cackled, and fled for the bar.
One semi-naked man picked up a guitar, the other picked up some sticks, and the Tweak Bird experience had begun. Picture this if you will; John Bonham drums doing battle with pitch-shifted riffs, ghoulish but sexy vocals floating over a Grand Canyon's worth of awe... to see Tweak Bird live is to know how Richard Dreyfuss felt when he witnessed the alien mothership in Close Encounters: part of your body can't help but kneel.
Just one problem then: the two brothers that make up the band live in the state of Illinois, so unless they hop back on the motorbike pictured in their artwork, you'll just have to make do with this debut album. Poor you.
Or rather, lucky bastard you. Because songs like 'Lights In Line' feel like the Black Keys after some kind of freak Gamma Radiation accident has boosted their muscles. By contrast, the weird pixie vocals on 'Tunneling Through' provide an almost Ziggy Stardust counterpoint to all the herculean carnage - it's no surprise that the brothers Ashton and Caleb were getting into T-Rex while they recorded this.
There we have it then: a heavy band, but not a hardcore one. A lucid band, but not a psychedelic one. Tweak Bird are probably best summed up by their own artwork: two brothers riding a powerful machine, seeing what happens when the road goes that little bit further.