Silent Kids, Dinosaurs Turn Into Birds

review by dave heaton

This is my memory of what rock music in the ‘90s sounded like: loud guitars building a cloud of fuzz around a sweet/sad melody, plus a general feeling of drive and then lift-off. Silent Kids are a tight, gritty-dreamy band playing hummable pop songs standing in a field of noise. There’s echoes of Built to Spill, the Apples in Stereo, Superchunk. Dinosaurs Turn Into Birds is one of those humble but epic albms built for playing it again and again, and loud,

I like how the liner notes praise “the titans of modern day life”, thing like a drive-in movie theatre, a corner of a particular street, a sound in a particular song. “Teenage Symphonies”, one song is called; “”The Hissing of the Summer Grass”, another. These are songs about life, the everyday things that are never as mundane as they seem. These songs are romantic about traveling, about cities and towns, about nature – but bittersweet about it all too. That may be why there’s a sci-fi or mystery tone in the air sometimes, that sense that more is going on beneath the surface.

I don’t understand, but love, the song “Cable Cars”, with its threat,” cable cars / break your heart.” More literal but no less heartbreaking/transcendent is this – “listen to the hissing of the summer grass / we’re growing old so fast.” And where does he hear that hissing? “Everywhere.”

{www.twoshedsmusic.com}