Between the ages of 8 and 10, I owned four parakeets—Sparky, Tweety, Sparky II and Zippy. The fact that one of these birds was named “Sparky II” should tell you that this story doesn’t end happily for everyone involved.
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Squack ‘n’ roll! The duo behind Birdlips (Lindsay Pitts and Cliff Usher) are still perched on our shoulders, singing sweetly into our ears. |
Giving a bird to a child is like giving a microphone to a mime; I had no use for these creatures. They flew around my parents’ porch, pecked holes in the screen and took off. Brightly colored as they are, parakeets aren’t exactly made to survive in the wild; coincidentally, my neighbors had a group of cats with very keen targeting systems.
The survival odds for local bands aren’t much better. But among the musicians I’ve held dear to my heart in the last year, Birdlips is the rarest creature, and the one I’d most like to see avoid the fate of my poor parakeets.
While most acts in town seem to come from some historical precedent or mate like rabbits and spawn as many offshoots as possible, Birdlips still strikes me as an anomaly—dropped in our midst by Mazzy Star or Alex Chilton or the Velvet Underground, likely to take off again at any moment.
Part of it is the plumage: Guitarist Cliff Usher is a red-headed George Harrison in corduroy and paisley; keyboardist Lindsay Pitts is nature’s update of the Twiggy or Zooey Deschanel model, with a taste for mod fashions and boots. But the two sing a song sweeter than any ’keet. They perch on the dark side of the delicate—that Alice in Chains unplugged album, modern psychedelia like Beach House and High Places (bands they turned me on to)—ruffle my feathers, then ascend.
Turns out that one of my birds that escaped, Sparky, survived the cats and found his way to a home in a nearby subdivision. While I’d like to keep Birdlips to myself, I’ve shared them a lot in the last year, played them during dinner parties or put them on mixes for friends. I hope that every set of ears for these two is a warm, welcoming perch.
