Mind and Mother

Fear and laziness too often dictate much of how we live, or rather don't live, trapping our lives in a holding pattern that keeps us from becoming what we might be. When you listen to Burd Early’s latest album "Mind and Mother," you’ll be reminded that the door of the cage isn’t locked and that it’s time to be free. The album flows with a sense of purpose and urgency of emotion, giving you the feeling that Burd Early is singing these songs as a way of grasping at an elusive truth. He seems to be on a mission, looking for a new openness and a new way to be. He’s embarking on this mission with or without you, but we certainly hope you’ll join him. Sonically, "Mind and Mother" has an almost sensual quality to it, bringing together lush electronic musical atmospheres with a mellow and melodic rock backbone. The album begins with the track “How Far” droning triumphantly to a rock-steady beat. What follows is the alternately wild and reflective track “Warm Blood,” with it’s crackling guitar and primitive chant -- “There’s a silence happening underneath all the acting” -- a calling out to the seemingly immutable silence of our unfeigned selves. The cold metallic rock of “Blackdot” will make you feel trapped behind your eye lens, only to be set free again by the gentle fusing of slow country and electronic warbling in “Undoing the Day.” On the instantly catchy “Fertilizer Waiting to Happen,” Burd Early sings with an almost Pavementesque crooning about our inevitable fate. The title track, “Mind and Mother,” follows a tender groove that sets the heart aflutter with its alluring melody and its hopeful resolve to make a union from what’s been torn. The album closes with the bubbling electronics of “The Web that Weds,” a brooding ode to honesty.