Useless Creatures

VINYL FORMAT. Useless Creatures is an instrumental album that was previously only available with the deluxe edition of Noble Beast. Featuring Glenn Kotche of Wilco on percussion and Todd Sickafoose on double bass. 'Unsurprisingly, a number of the tracks on Useless Creatures find Bird making use of his loop station, but freed from the pressures of writing "real" songs, he turns up some interesting results. "You Woke Me Up" is quite theatrical in its delivery, its pizzicato notes creeping along at a steady pace as Bird passionately overlays violin melodies atop. "Nyatiti" sounds almost like a Shugo Tokumaru song, with its clattering, pots-and-pans rhythms and its playful, upbeat guitar melodies. "The Barn Tapes" finds Bird taking a stab at an ambient drone piece, using tape loops to stretch and bend violin notes into bizarre, atonal shapes. It's a mesmerizing song that at times recalls the textural aesthetic of My Bloody Valentine's "Touched." "Carrion Suite," a four-part suite that features Todd Sickafooose on the bass and Wilco's Glenn Kotche on drums, is by turns jazzy, operatic, and spare. Finally, on "Hot Math," Bird finds an outlet for his recent obsession with West African pop, and thankfully it sounds nothing like Vampire Weekend.' - Mehan Jayasuriya / Pop Matters