There are videos that exist as ideas before the accompanying music is ever settled on, and then there are videos that hear a song out and proceed to break it down into its basic visual forms. The new video for “Burt,” the closing track to Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk’s new album Think Tone, encapsulates every familiarity heard in the nearly seven-minute duration of the song: slow-moving waves; occasional glimpses of light; layers of skin and cloth rolling over each other and folding in on themselves, rising out of and falling back into the dark; and a mass of blackness absorbing and reforming the Beach Boys-tinged ocean vibes rolling inward on the coast.
These images by themselves are eerie and disconcerting, but with “Burt” ringing out of your speakers, it’s clear that under the layers of water and smooth linen lies that glowing light: a core where everything is made incomprehensible before it all becomes one. It’s the BBDDM way of pulling layers of sunshine from the ambient din at the center of every song, and it has never been more prevalent than on this track, with guitar strums and vocal harmonies rippling outward before fading and returning to the source. We are the woman on the beach, covered and only seeing the light when the obscuring sheet is pulled from our eyes, allowing us to finally see where all the warmth is coming from.
Think Tone is out now on Fire Talk Records.
• Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk: http://bbddm.tumblr.com
• Fire Talk Records: http://firetalk.bigcartel.com