Peter Gural’s personal story informs his songwriting art without ever obscuring its value for listeners. It’s not a small achievement. Another triumph of his new album release Birdy’s World is how deftly Gural marries assorted musical styles into a seamless and signature approach that holds up over the course of Birdy’s World’s eleven tracks. Uniting the strands of Gural’s varied influences into a coherent whole is one of the most impressive victories that he logs in the writing, recording, and performing of these songs. I haven’t heard many new 2023 releases with the enduring values emanating from Birdy’s World’s eleven cuts.
He’s struggled with mental health issues and his concern for other’s struggles comes through in the album’s songs. Gural has a habit of combining songs tackling such fare with improbably bright musical arrangements like we hear with the album’s first song. Kicking off the collection with its title track is an obvious sign of confidence from Gural and the track’s musicianship shows he’s justified in placing his faith behind this song.
A flurry of crisp guitar notes opens “Lonely Song”, the album’s second track, before it launches in full as another of the album’s highly stylized romps. Gural always moderates the tempo of such numbers, however, rather than rushing Birdy World’s more energetic moments. It is one of the best early songs about the eleven. Gural broaches weighty subject matter with the track “Ollie”, but his songwriting skills are developed enough to make such serious forays an entertaining listening experience as well as illuminating. The deceptively light touch of the soft pop-rock arrangement underplays the ability of Gural’s music to get under your skin.
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“Lost Island Man” is a song that underscores the quality of his work. Gural seizes on a key compelling central image for his song about isolation, self-imposed and otherwise. The dreamy waft of the song’s progression, its quasi-ethereal vocal harmonies, and the strategically placed lulls within the composition conspire to make this one of Birdy’s World’s best tunes. Gural conjures guitar-loaded fireworks appropriate for the interpersonal conflict of “Living in Dysfunction” and you’ll be rest assured that his compulsion for autobiographical material will weary few, if any, listeners.
He frames the self-referential passages and personal experiences in an universal fashion. “Flatline” continues this trait in nearly the starkest of possible ways. Emerging from a low point in Gural’s life during a mental health hospitalization, there’s an undercurrent of self-dialogue implied by the writing yet it will affect all but the hardest of hearts. I don’t think hope is a stranger during these songs, for certain, and Gural’s best invocation of such emotion comes with the album’s final tandem of tracks.
“In Your Heart” is, as its title implies, a love song from Gural. Electronic instrumentation steers the song’s way, for the most part, but key embellishments from percussion and guitar deep the track’s potential impact. I can’t deny the tenderness and intimacy coming from this song. The finale “It’s Over Now” is another one of Gural’s songs looking back on a life lived, but these are instructive turns for the songwriter and, hopefully, his audience, rather than just abject navel-gazing. The sheen of his pop songwriting texture remains as bright as ever, but there’s a level of intimacy present here as well that’s as much a product of the interplay between musicians as it is any other reason. It closes Birdy’s World on an unquestionable high and underlines what a thoroughly satisfying release this is.
Gwen Waggoner-Howard
