We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Birds of the Deep

by The World Palestine

supported by
jason hendry
jason hendry thumbnail
jason hendry This album is a journey and the best TWP album to date! I love the nod to MBV on This is the Last Level. Favorite track: This Is the Last Level.
revrhodes
revrhodes thumbnail
revrhodes Everything you want from a TWP release.. unexpected twists into unbelievably good hooks, melancholic psychedelics and face melting guitar riffs. Favorite track: This Is the Last Level.
Jonathan Eaton
Jonathan Eaton thumbnail
Jonathan Eaton Combining elements of synth, noise, pop, rock and occasionally even a touch grungy. Birds of the Deep rides a wave of sonic emotion to a exorcism of sadness. A nice journey. Favorite track: Lusciously Lax.
/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $4 USD  or more

     

  • self released CD
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    CD version of "Birds of the Deep" with 2-panel insert and tray card, shrink wrapped in jewel case. Artwork by Jason Tapler / Argonaut Ink.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Birds of the Deep via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • 12" lathe cut vinyl (mono)
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    130 gram 12-inch mono vinyl record with labels, jacket, dust cover and plastic outer sleeve. This is a lathe cut record, so it will be quieter and not as clean sounding. This is wholesale cost - not for profit. Turnaround time can be anywhere from 1 week to a month. Thank you!

    Includes unlimited streaming of Birds of the Deep via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

1.
American Goo 02:08
Home alone again. Mission impossible. The party's over. A blown deposit. American fruit stand. The party's over. Out of the closet. The largest in the world. The party's over. With the lights out, it's Les Dangerous. The party's over. Hey you- P.U. We don't need your American goo. Hey you- Sonic Youth. We don't need your American goo. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore- How could you do this to me?
2.
Huffy Puffy 03:29
I'll be your best friend. Oh. When it's on, it's on. It's easier when you love someone too. I have a confession. Oh it's wrong. It's wrong and it's easier said than done. Oh it's true. I never knew there was someone who knew me more and when I want to leave you're always at the door. I need a Cheerio girl. I live in a cereal world.
3.
Hello. Wake up. Take a look at yourself. Wow wow. What ever happened to the friends I love? I thought I saw you on the ground above. When I found things out, it was all a dream. Everything is so hard to hide and all the memories are so far behind. When I found things out, it was all a dream.
4.
I've been reading Kafka and the places say it's a physical breakdown. Eraserhead. In Jamaica, we eat your make up and then we break up. So throw your cake up.
5.
I'm an elliptical machine. She's a phone come away now that you're gone.
6.
In a way, we've gone too far. I can't move on. You've got me feeling stuck and you make me feel weird. I can't play. It's not too hard to get it on. My head is filled with junk but it's getting easier. What the hell was in that water? Don't mess with the president's daughter. So get behind me, girl. I'll show you that I'm man enough. Things aren't really adding up. I want you. If you want me too then just say you do. If you want me to, then just say you do. I want you and if you want me too then just say you do.
7.
Will we ever speak again? Well it's gone... When we used to meet upstairs. Well it's gone... Will I ever see you this way? Well it's gone... When we used to feel the same. Well it's gone... There's a hundred million steps between the devil and God. There's a hundred million things between the devil and God. And all my life, it's new faces.
8.
I can't help it. I'm scared. It's alright. I can't help it. I'm scared. It's my life. I'm proud to be a mannequin.

about

Reviewed by Ryan Gabos for The Big Takeover (May 5 2020)

"Les Easterby is Kansas’s finest unchecked asset, having contributed to its musical history on a more radical and meaningful scale than most are even privy to. He’s created The Wichita Flag, a subversive gospel whose words are lifted or inspired right from the Good Book and aimed back at its acolytes to stress their emptiness and unreliability. He’s served as a member of And Academy, the greatest super-group to emerge from Wichita, boasting—and your writer is a little biased here— Aids, the most superb album our nation’s midsection has ever known (or not known). Most consistently, he has continued churning out albums throughout the years under his solo moniker, The World Palestine. Birds of the Deep, his latest, follows the Dik Dik Sounds EP of 2017 which consisted of four completed songs cut from the same sessions, originally meant for inclusion on this full-length.

Though it’s impossible to have judged it in its once intended form, the separation of said tracks appears to be for the best. Sounds is murkier in quality and more lo-fi, or was at least mixed and mastered so. Birds sees Easterby at his proggy best, harkening back to the extended jams, corkscrew time signatures, and blissful meditative states of early masterpiece Let’s See Star B.

“American Goo”, a song that appeared on Soundcloud ages ago, pokes fun at the upturned noses of toxic fandom. “Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore / How could you do this to me?” he bemoans, wryly misplacing the very public divorce of Sonic Youth’s mother and father figures and subsequent breakup of the band as a slight on the fans themselves rather than an issue of personal turmoil. The song bears a duality, as Birds was reportedly written long ago in the wake of a different kind of toxicity, addressing the toll of a past romantic relationship. The dissolution of one of indie rock’s instantly recognizable creative couples are the target of ire here by both subconscious and substitutive means. The instrumental backing is fittingly turbulent, trading 8/8 and 9/8 phrases, never letting the rhythm gain footing. It ends with unpredictable measures, drums pounding in fucked up sync with guitar bursts going off like a malfunctioning pitching machine.

Easterby’s piano accompaniment really hit a stride in the preceding Everything Is Subliminal, and that ethic fills Birds with some choice moments. The brightest of those hits in “This Is the Last Level”, our first glimpse at the record’s prog ambitions. What begins as a tempo-shifting, tinny, frenetic blitz evoking a feverish escape from a never-ending maze soon gives way to an ascending movement led by a piano’s pleasance: the kind that, like any power pop of Todd Rundgren, grants a robust comfort. “Whatever happened to the friends I love?” he mourns; the fault of this loss purposefully vague.

The sequence of “Get Behind Me” leading into “Lusciously Lax” is one of the strongest arcs of Easterby’s career. The former dips into the well of funk The World Palestine has shown an erratic penchant for on past cuts like “G-Fruit Juice” and “Snow Skis on Summer Skies”. A groovy bass pattern consisting of only three notes sees the landscape contort around it with each new bar as the enveloping, anxious synths mold the mood in new, exhilarating directions. Its uncertainty posits itself in the lyrics as Easterby pleads, “I want you / And if you want me too, then just say you do,” yet love is not always so simple. Just then, the tethers break loose and a sprawl emits; it’s as if his DAW entered a new dimension upon exporting the file. The track collapses into a mesh of aching vocals, resonant bass searching for an exit from its dreamlike surroundings, and the echoes of a lost drum machine. This beautiful barrage transitions seamlessly into “Lax”, wasting no time in achieving Birds’ greatest pummeling in the form of a grand, fuzzed wall of wailing guitars. Their necks coalesce sweetly and despairingly somewhere between the soaring dynamics of My Bloody Valentine and A Catholic Eduction era Teenage Fanclub. The distortion-crazed epic also acts as a mini suite for Easterby’s other projects to meet in one place. Igniting the chord progression off to its loudest heights is a subtly placed acoustic riff that directly interpolates (TWP offshoot) The Royal Palestine’s classic “Who’s It Gonna B”. Later on, as the sun greets what is left of the day after the guitar reckoning, he closes out the inextricable two-act wonder with a relaxed repurposing of The Wichita Flag’s “New Places”.

As harrowing as it must have been to craft, Birds of the Deep transparently conveys those feelings that served as its reluctant ingredients. This is emo in the purest, most justifiable sense. It is also prog, power pop, DIY, shoegaze; you name it. It is the most involved 38 minutes you’ll hear all year. Having dropped during this odd period of quarantine is a disguised blessing, as it will appeal to anyone yearning for contact and understanding. These writings from a once-shut-out heart are perfect sympathies for the physically shut-in masses."

credits

released April 5, 2020

The World Palestine is Les Easterby

Recorded in 2016-2020 in a basement, bedroom, or living room.
Main drums tracks recorded at Air House (Wichita KS)

Special guests
Alyson Assaf-Easterby - flute on trk 2
Avery Potillo - trumpet on trk 3

cover artwork by Jason Tapler

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

The World Palestine Wichita, Kansas

contact / help

Contact The World Palestine

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like The World Palestine, you may also like: