I'm left completely confused listening to this album, trying to keep up with Dustin Krcatovich's wily, random sense of humor and creative, scattershot imagination. Musically, Krcatovich is ubiquitous. One moment his music is the product of exposure to home recordings and pop music and at another it is the product of listening to "Revolution 9" too many times.
Vive La Fantastique! Avec Actual Birds and Friends begins with "Honesty is Still My Best Policy," a song rooted in the Velvet Underground's simplicity, but reaching for a more finely produced fuzz. The suggestion is of the mid to late 1960s, with enough retrospect to make up for any of the edgy aspects of that period that didn't work or come to fruition. The bits of this album that sound like pop music are nice and clean, with all the charm that a home recording has to offer. The other parts are fairly typical exercises in tape manipulation and looping. Voices rebound, echo, wash, and repeat in often nonsensical patterns. Instead of expanding the album's reach and offering more to fans of strange music and pop alike, this inclusion of strange sounds basically severs the album from itself. The disc no longer sounds like a coherent or cohesive package and begins to sound like a random assembly of songs that didn't fit anywhere else, either.
With the first quarter of the album sounding like a competent set of songs, this is a bit of a disappointment. Krcatovich introduces the album well, and until "O Ye of Little Faith (Something I Should Not See)" begins, there's no reason to think that the album is about to sink under the weight of its own conception. From that point forward, the "experimental" end of the album begins; while there are recognizable songs on some of them, there's also a huge load of unnecessary effects, distortion, and strange instrumentation littered over Krcatovich's voice. His songs do just fine as little guitar numbers. They're catchy without needing any weird production or unusual technique thrown in for spice. It is possible to do too much to a song or a record, Actual Birds has made the mistake of doing just that. Not only do the songs become stranger and less appealing as they go, but the way Krcatovich sings begins to fall out of harmony with the music; in some places the juxtaposition is jarring and uncomfortable.
This is the first effort from an obviously ambitious musician, but some amount of temperance will be needed to take his raw talent and turn it into something worthwhile from beginning to end. As it stands, now, there are a few treats on this record, but not enough to warrant multiple listens. Tape loops and pop songs does not an experimental album make, so maybe Actual Birds should just stick to what they're best at: writing some decent hooks. That'll improve whatever their next release is a thousand fold.
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