Album Review: Birdy - Birdy

Birdy's eponymous first release firmly establishes the young musician as an incredibly talented emerging artist and speaks to a bright future for her musical career. The record does frequently betray the singer's youthfulness and inexperience and certainly has its weaker moments, but the musical talent that pervades each track often overshadows these shortcomings.

The album opens with Birdy's rendition of Phoenix's 1901, whose established instrumental and lyrical quality is complemented by the artist's strong vocal sound, although her interpretation of the track's vocal phrasing occasionally seems haphazard. Birdy's take on Bon Iver's Skinny Love is bold and remarkably successful, adding a soft yet powerfully emotive feminine voice and strong piano sound to what was already a compositional masterpiece. Her impressive vocal range is showcased more comprehensively in covers of Cherry Ghost's People Help The People and Fleet Foxes' White Winter Hymnal.

Birdy's vocals appear somewhat less refined in her take on The Postal Service's The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, although the musical arrangement she chooses for her rendition of the song works relatively well. Birdy's interpretations of Francis And The Lights' I'll Never Forget You, The Naked & Famous' Young Blood and The xx's Shelter, however, are less engaging and less sophisticated in their vocal quality than their original counterparts. Without A Word is the only original song on the album, providing a brief display of the singer's ability to create perfectly formulated indie-folk songs that are accessible and unique in equal measure. The young singer undoubtedly proves her musical and vocal talent with this record and, as long her subsequent original releases match this quality, Birdy will likely be able to carve out an important place for herself in the her genre.