Labels: Lost Toys
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Daybreak is a decent little mini album of wandering, downbeat, piano based pop music. A mere 7 songs and 25 minutes, it certainly doesn’t outstay it’s welcome, a lesson plenty of bands could learn. It’s not really the kind of music that I have much familiarity with, but Buzzard Lope sound pretty decent to me. The song writing is smart, with tunes such as the opening “Miner’s Son” drifting softly then swelling into louder moments packed with orchestral sounds yet still the weary vocals remain in the forefront, dragging the mood back down to where Buzzard Lope intend it to be. This is good music for a lazy Saturday morning on an empty weekend, with just enough energy to keep me awake, and pleasant songs to maintain my attention. There are also little jazzy flickers that I appreciated too, with some lovely understated brass on “You’re Wrong” that finish up sounding like an intelude from a 70s detective show, very nice.
This is not typical Collective Zine fodder, but I found this a nice change of pace, and it fits nicely with Neil Halstead’s “Oh! Mighty Engine” LP I reckon. Of final note is what a Buzzard Lope is (according to that bastion of truth, Wikipedia). A Buzzard Lope is a dance from the Southern USA in the 1890s that represents “a turkey buzzard getting ready to eat a dead Mule”. That is the kind of thing that happened when the internet wasn’t invented I guess. In 2010, you can probably see an actual photo of a turkey buzzard getting ready to eat a dead mule with a caption of “LOL I EATZ AN ASS!” if you google hard enough, yet witnessing this dance being performed in public is by several magnitudes more unlikely.