Birds are alluring, fascinating creatures. Unencumbered by earthly concepts, they soar through the skies, only briefly interacting with those of us watching them from below. It’s like they inhabit a parallel world, almost, one where the turmoil of daily life on Earth is entirely escapable. When deary, the London-based dreampop three-piece of Ben Easton, Dottie Cockram and Harry Catchpole named their debut album Birding, it wasn’t just as an homage to our feathered friends—they were referencing the sense of expansion, wonder, and abandon their music evokes. They chose the title to draw attention to the direct impact humans have on the world around us, whether that be nature, or ourselves. Across 11 tracks that run the gamut from ocean-deep shoegaze riffs to cloud-light sprinkles of ethereal indie, Birding is the sound of a band who have definitively found their groove.
“I got really into reading about birds and all these historical stories and poetry about them,” says singer/guitarist Dottie. “You find these beautiful images of birds that represent hope, but they're also animals. Some of them eat their own young. Some of them, like vultures and crows, are a sign of death to some people. They represent all these different elements, which I think sum up a lot of the album.”
“The album is all about human consequences,” explains Ben, the group’s guitarist. “Consequences on each other, our own minds, on mental health, on nature.. One idea that was quite tangible to us is the idea that humans have the biggest consequences on innocent, vulnerable, sentient beings, like birds, for example. It goes with the vulnerability of our inner selves, or the child in us, which pairs with the album art—a kid trying to fly. It's very ethereal, but it also has a lot of sad undertones to it as well.”
deary (all lowercase, if you please) came to be during COVID lockdown, with Ben leaving the southeast London scene he had been a part of and challenging himself to write more emotional, introspective music. A mutual friend recommended Dottie in 2021, and the pair quickly bonded over a shared love of Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, and MBV. “We had to meet in the smoking area of a pub in the middle of February, and it was a bit rainy, and we had to sit kind of far apart and talk like strangers,” laughs Dottie. “We got on immediately. I think we were both kind of looking for each other, in a way. I really wanted to experiment and let go of the instrumental side of things a little bit, and explore my vocals, and be a bit more of a front person. I'm quite like a shy person. And I think Ben needed to find another avenue to share all his new ideas. We found each other at the perfect time.”
Dottie recalls that the first artist they discussed on that fated meeting was Liz Fraser, the enigmatic singer of the Cocteau Twins—and while the band have garnered quite few comparisons to the Cocteaus over time, what with Dottie’s angelic vocals, Ben’s layered guitar melodies awash in reverb, and Harry’s gargantuan drumming style, they’ve developed a style that draws from a wide breadth of influences while remaining completely their own.
“There are moments on this new record where we might take the essence of those bands’ vulnerability, their naivety, their attention to melody. We’re not actively trying to sound like anyone. And being on Bella Union, it’s just as important that we look at Beach House or Father John Misty or John Grant as touchstones as to why we wanted to be on the label. “They have absolute faith in artistry and lets you explore at your own pace. It's taken a long time for us to get to this point—it feels like a natural fit for us to be here.”
With Birding, deary have purposely evolved their sound, opting for starker lyrics and heavier instrumentation than on their previous releases. A perfect example of this is “Smile”, the album’s opener: amid buzzsaw guitars and airy windchimes, Dottie sings of the announcement of a national epidemic of violence against women. It’s a haunting track, and the first time the band have tackled such an intense subject matter.
“I've always been someone that listens to lyrics first,” says Dottie. “I knew we wanted to do something a bit different with this album compared to the first few EPs. Before, I would do long, drawn out vocals, decorated with long delays and things. But with “Smile”, there are so many words in tight succession, I was just really happy with myself that I could fit it all in and show this new side of us.” Dottie was able to use the song’s searing lyrics to dig deeper into her emotions. “ “I felt so much anger, fear and disappointment,” she says. “It felt that, for years, not a day had gone by where I didn't see a news article about a woman or young girl being abused or have a friend tell me her story. I don’t know what the answer is and it’s difficult to capture all these feelings into one song, I just know it can’t stay as it is now.”’
“It was the first time that Dottie had gone,’This is something we need to write about,’ as opposed to singing purely about emotion,” adds Ben. “It was very clear to me that these vocals had to take a real front-and-center place. It had to be a lot drier, a lot more direct and purposeful. The vocals are really loud, they're quite prominent and vulnerable in themselves. But that's the point.”
“Seabird”, the album’s lead single, takes “Smile”’s heaviness and transmutes it into something heartening. Propelled by Harry’s Portishead-esque backbeats, the track sonically resembles a wide open sky, with layer upon layer of guitar chords echoing to the heavens. “With the whole bird theme, there was also a direct nod to religious iconography—the majesty of feeling insignificant in the wider world,” says Ben. ““Seabird” is like a fable, a story of this person pleading to a bird and asking, ‘When does it get better?’” These questions, as it turns out, are not rhetorical. “Personally, I was writing the record in one of the worst periods of my life,” Ben continues. “I was not in a good space at all. Our last EP, Aurelia, was about transition, and how it's cool to change. And Birding is, ‘Oh no, I‘ve made some really disruptive life decisions.’ The album came from an isolated, almost hopeless space, and you can hear that in parts of the record. But there are also moments that are very self-loving and meditative, and a bit more uplifting.”
Other focus tracks include the seven-and-a-half-minute long dreampop epic “Alfie” and “Alma”, probably the album’s most pop-forward moment. ““Alma” was a song that's been with us since the beginning but we never really found a place for it,” says Dottie. “Then I think Ben really stripped it all back and lightened it up and made it a bit more of this pop structure.” Adds Ben: “We recorded it quite late in the process, we trusted the room, we trusted where it was going to go, and it came out sounding exactly how it needed to. It's a testament to the fact that we've found our sound as a band.”
While deary self-produced their debut EP Fairground in 2023, Birding is the first time they’ve produced their own music since, taking on the task with their longtime collaborator Iggy B. When the band were recording the album, Ben was coming off of a period of working as a freelance mixing engineer and producer. Having acquired the skillset needed to produce deary’s own records, the band decided that Birding would be a collaborative effort from beginning to end.
“I think with any artist, your first EPs are the first steps into what your sound is going to eventually become,” says Dottie. “With the album, we've grown up so much. Harry joined last year, and we’re a little bit of a family now, and we really understand each other. I remember us being in the studio, we were looking through some demos for this record, and I turned to Ben, and said, ‘I think we actually need to decide what we want deary to sound like and not follow these roadmaps. We need to think a bit more decisively about these songs and be really sure that we know where we want them to go.’”
“Our last EP was us trying to be deary,” says Ben, ‘and this album is us being deary.”
