Single Review: Annabel Allum - 'Beat The Birds'

Annabel Allum is self-proclaimed ‘good at social media’. Hell, isn’t everybody these days? But there is something about this girl that sets her apart from the millions of instaclones with an acoustic guitar and a weird way of pronouncing words.

First of all, she’s got an electric guitar which is always nice. Another thing is that she feels authentic. There’s no thrills and bullshit to her social media skills- the first video you see on Facebook is in black and white and features her in a sweater in her bedroom handcrafting CD’s. This new single “Beat the Birds” retains that no thrills approach, with heaps of that implied authenticity and also has the perks of being an absolutely fantastic song.

Blasts of fuzz and squeals of guitar noise to accompany Allum’s fantastic voice in the intro aside, this is a fairly conventional L7 inspired nugget of delightful grunge-pop. But there’s plenty of Allum’s little idiosyncrasies is what keeps it interesting. The distorted “hey’s” at the end of the choruses is something that will not leave your head for days. An almost lackadaisical approach to the vocals give it a slacker charm that this kind of guitar pop can lack- you can picture this song being performed with almost a cheeky gleam behind the eyes. It strays away from the raw beauty of songs like “Foxes” and isn’t quite the immediate anthem that “Eat Greens” is but if you give this song a chance, it’s an essential piece of guitar music in 2018.



Review by James Kitchen