Chløë Black x Strange Little Bird EP
Chloë Black
A strange little bird
Fuck, fuckity-fuck-fuck!
Where to start? …. and why not just review it in plain English…explain its sound-alike references and leave it to random discovery and likely ultimate ignorance or doom-scroll?
I can’t, because this suite of songs can’t be heard without feeling like you have skin in the game.
In my autistic on-boarding, hyperfocus and uploading, my immersive and profound experience of composition, songcraft, poetry, confronted with how this EP has permeated my consciousness, it feels like being asked to review the majesty and significance of the Holy Grail by saying, “nice cup”.
For final context for the biases that will comprise this under-skilled, clumsy and fumbling word vomit, not having obsessed over a release like Strange Little Bird EP since Radiohead’s Ok Computer and XTC’s Apple Venus, Here’s my declaration of why Chløë Black might be the most sinfully ignored musical genius of a generation.
The EP, as a narrative, seems fractured, schizophrenic even. This observation is more due to the listener’s desire to make sense of it, rather than accepting it as a cluster of songs. Still, the reason one is almost forced to read between the lines is due to the poetry and emotion wielded like a spikey mace on some songs and a surgeon’s scalpel on others…if Cupid were the surgeon.
As a suite, even the genres, multiple, each faithful and perfectly executed, reiterate the rudderless nature of it all.
Title track Strange Little Bird (reviewed independently on this page) is this wide-eyed, fragile cartoon puppy dog. A tale of a misunderstood and delicate creature asking for a second chance despite having done nothing more than being a Strange Little Bird. Lyrically, it's clear, pleading and relatable to anyone who’s ever found themselves punished for being the ugly duckling. As I’ve reviewed this song in its entirety previously, I’ll move on to…
Sick Ones, an almost operatic, reflective aria through a Gladys Knight & The Pips filter (Motown tones making regular appearances throughout the EP).
The instrumentation is sparse, and the emotion is real and raw. Perhaps the saddest song on the release, given its conclusive introspections “If I cut the sick ones off will there be anybody left? There's no one to make proud, you were right about me I'm just a sad clown” framed by the tormented recognition “I don't want this pity party, there's no-one to invite anyway”.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that there’s no spit and blood in these recordings, but it’s the introspection that hurts the most; the questioning of self and worth. There is a subtle orchestral lilt to Sick Ones, reminiscent of Depeche Mode’s One Caress.
As a presentation of almost consistent perfection, I find the track listing curious but I doubt I could arrange them in any better an order…or even that alternate ordering would make any difference, when the EP sounds like a Best Of a or –more remarkably still- a compilation of different artists (did someone say segue?)
Parasite is like if Beyoncé ate 50 Cent’s head. If production choices made this thing slap any harder, it would be on an early NIN album. In the sleaziest, most threatening–most threatening by comparison to the subdued, timid soul we met prior-voice of self-confidence, a virtual door is kicked open and “I'm gon’ turn up like it's my birthday… you got no idea what the fuck you're in for”
While Chløë Black, as a creative force, deserves the gushy wall of praise here and in previous reviews, it would be remiss of me not to point out composers and producers Isaac Hanson, Rob Kleiner, Jeff Shum, Carl Ryden, and co-composer on this track, Ashley Gordon. Gordon’s contribution isn’t starkly obvious, but one can only surmise it’s the more goth elements of this track (being the simple Bauhaus-worthy minor progressions). While the subject matter of the general release is…at best sombre and worst devastatingly, depressingly real, this EP isn’t goth and charmingly has no real pretensions or is beholden to any particular genre or sound.
Finally, “No parasites in sight, No Paris lights in sight, No Paradise in mind” has surpassed Elvis Costello’s chorus for New Amsterdam as my favourite wordplay.
Dream Catcher, like each track, a palate cleanser from the last and a new glimpse of this talented auteur, it’s perhaps my least favourite song and the only track I’d class as not single-worthy, but it’s still it’s consistent in an holistic approach, it sounds blissful and floating and it’s about being just that.
I don’t flatter myself that, despite best intentions, people unfamiliar with Bunnings will find this review, but on the off chance it’s being read in the US - Home Depot / UK – Wickes. Stay with me… totally relevant.
It was in the heaving, ever popular carpark of one such Mega-Shop, more popular on weekends when Mum and Dad peruse the aisles with that boring ambition of Jones-Keeping-Up-With-ness, busily comparing the prices of shit that’s been mass-produced and merely serves to make your house as shite looking as the one next door.
Anyway, I clearly have a bug up my arse about consumerism and that, but the picture I’m painting is the reason I’ve sat down to spill a soul’s worth of worship about this EP.
I’d long been a fan of Miss Black, and I had heard this next song a few times…but till this random opportunity, this cataclysmic star alignment–time/space/solitude…and likely meds, I found myself inconsolably weeping at the perfect, articulate and profoundly romantic message of…
Hell Is T-Shirt Weather, a punk ass title regardless of the message, like a Shoplifters Of The World Unite or You Need Satan More Than He Needs You, but in terms of generating the type of tears and emotion I was feeling, the Smiths title is ironic. An early Post-Smiths Morrissey release was called There’s A Place In Hell For Me And MY Friends. It’s gorgeous and precisely the type of foppish, “Woe Is Me” terrain that he is equally lampooned as worshipped for. I like it, but it’s EMO-by-numbers. What Chløë Black manages to create in a few words is make a sincere dedication to someone…that’s not the listener…but that lays the simplest guide for honest love; unfiltered, unselfish, unconditional. In essence, a love we’ve either had, have or desire.
Paraphrased: I’m sorry I’m not exactly your ideal person, and thank you for loving me regardless. Just know unequivocally that the most challenging circumstances (even the fires of hell) are trifling if I can share them with you.
Suffice to say, I needed to stop procrastinating about reviewing this EP immediately after wiping my eyes, buying that and getting to my computer.
Morrissey…who?
Back on the roller-coaster with FU4L, a pop song? Maybe? It feels disingenuous dancing to it when it’s sooooooo despairing and angry. I’ve painted this EP accordingly in its schizophrenia, but the face slap of this most Top 40 production still takes me by surprise every time. Curiously, despite its determined delivery, it’s not a song about empowerment; it’s a song that the narcissistic monster, presumably (one would hope)- the same creature responsible for the angrier elements of this ride, could find a degree of satisfaction in this. With so much general self-discovery and relatable empowerment through trial, FU4L feels like a rare moment of surrender.
It’s also one of those many personal favourites that I’m selfishly grateful for, but also feel that if the lyrics were “Oooh Baby, La, la Baby, (insert bullshit)” it would be lapped up by the Swift/Perry/Lipa crowd.
Like every great multitrack release, once you’re in, YOU’RE IN and soon enough, organically, the partialities to the tones of the artists, resonate so thoroughly that each new favourite track morphs comfortably; not transcending or at any expense of the previous fave, just that you barely care that your previous little piece of Soul-Candy has been comfortably usurped.
So I’d like to discuss the final track on this EP, Bunny, at this point and leave my current favourite to last.
Bunny is at first listen a light touch. A satisfying end to a huge meal of emotional turmoil and -if you’re not paying particular attention- an almost…sweet little sign off. aaaw isn’t that cute, she wants to be his pet bunny. NUP!
This Bunny is as cherished and petted as the lab-tortured poor bastards they test your fucking perfume on.
While the song would sound just as pretty and delicate on a busker’s acoustic guitar, the mellifluous chord structures, the embellishments and counter melodies all juxtapose the darkness of the author's horrible truth.
It stands, once again, as an excellent example of the anguish and struggle contained throughout the EP. It is the best resolution to the EP as a running story, but as it’s the final track and speaks only to a “better the devil…” conclusion for our beaten protagonist, it’s not a payoff at all.
If Chløë Black is the person she’s singing about, someone needs to be her Saint Bernard, bounding through the snow with a tankard of rum on its collar - now!
Still, it’s also important to point out that this EP has resonated so profoundly with me and the few others I’ve shared it with, that maybe Chløë Black has unintentionally managed to speak to a shared general mistreatment or feeling of unworthiness, much like Morrissey, McGowan or Mark E Smith could sing so specifically about places and times we’ll never visit, while still completely understanding the plights therein.
Second last, but far from second least…
Godless. I don’t know if it’s intentional irony or if I’m simply projecting based on the obvious, but if Evangelists ever needed a compelling, triumphant and glorious Hymn, they couldn’t do better than this (obviously completely rewording this wonderful, blasphemous bitch slap)
It detonates in a wave of celebratory bells at the very start, like a show tune crescendo. Vocals in straight away, and once again the lyrics are rivalled in titillating brilliance by the timbre and dexterity of this songbird.
I am bereft of language and energy to continue praising this release and the artist responsible…’cept… one lyric from this impeccable track is
“After the fracture
It's hard to explain
The shell I've been left is just a stranger with my name
Well, I know the song about light getting in
So I cling to my pieces, in the hope that what remains might have survived for simple reasons
They're the strongest or the better parts of me”
No one! Prove me wrong? No one in pop/soul/rock is this profound, and few are as articulate.
Finally, “What did I do this for? What does it mean?” I don’t know exactly, but since I’m alive to appreciate it, since others are too, since the music scene internationally is governed and dominated by fakes –mere facsimiles of one another- posing as reliable documentarians of feeling and relevance in 2025…
I’m so glad Chløë Black is making music.