Bobby Birdman

Remember Christmas as a kid, when you would race down the stairs and voraciously tear open your gifts? There’d always be that one present that you weren’t too sure of. "What the fuck is this?” you’d say like every normal five-year-old. For me it was one of those calculator watches. I had no idea how to set the time, let alone calculate vectors, but I’d be damned if I was going to read the instructions. You get the impression that Rob Kieswetter (aka Bobby Birdman) felt the same way when he opened his drum machine this past holiday, because the six songs on Heart Caves seem less the product of a vision than the result of an experiment. The tumescent wahs and shambolic cricks and creeks of the album come off hastily compiled and press-of-a-button easy, which could work if there was the odd flash of ebullience. Unfortunately there’s only one gamesome bijou, the futuristic county-fair flare of "I Will Come Again” stands alone as a single and, we hope, should point Bobby in the right direction — or he could just read the damn instructions.