The 2020s have proven to be fruitful years for the continuing deconstruction of the electric guitar. Musicians such as Ava Mendoza, Chuck Roth, Wendy Eisenberg and others have emerged from various different corners of the music world, each offering their own perspective on the question of what role the fabled instrument plays in an ever-changing landscape. Does analogue guitar sorcery still hold any water in a laptop-driven experimental music world? Has non-idiomatic guitar playing simply become another idiom unto itself? Nina Garcia’s Bye Bye Bird presents an unassuming, but potent, approach to these questions.
Hailing from Paris, Garcia has been recording music for a decade under the name Mariachi, but Bye Bye Bird is her first release under her own name. Fittingly, the record is a more intimate, personal exploration of her guitar practice. Garcia’s music straddles the line between free improv and noise, and her work as Mariachi leans more towards the noise end of the spectrum. Her 2018 self-titled release is ugly and confrontational like a lot of the best noise music, with screeching, clanging guitar textures, extreme repetition and three second songs. Bye Bye Bird has plenty of that same catharsis, but with a greater interest in form. The pieces are simple in their presentation, with a fairly minimal setup in terms of pedals and effects, and portions of the record – particularly the more muted moments, such as ‘Ballade Des Souffles’ – sound as though they could have been recorded in a bedroom. Garcia’s approach to the guitar on this record is not one which revels in its own abstraction, but rather utilizes the instrument as a conduit for direct and visceral personal expression.
The record opens on a memorable note with the title track. First dwelling on one sustained note, then opening up in a light, contemplative manner, the track slowly sinks into a dark, grungy abyss. The bending, warping feedback of the guitar evokes the feeling of being submerged face first in cold water, and it effectively pulls the listener into Garcia’s world. A clear highlight of the record is the second track ‘Le Leurre’, on which Garcia performs using a guitar pickup that makes her instrument sound like an electric harmonica. The piece channels the blues influence that has always been a crucial, yet completely overlooked, element of drone and minimalist music from La Monte Young and onward, into a haunting, zombie-eyed clatter. It almost sounds like Sonny Boy Williamson by way of Aaron Dilloway, a fascinating and original direction to take with this kind of music. ‘Whistling Memories’, the final track on the album, is a seven-minute static jangle that sounds like post-punk guitar textures reduced to their most minimal essence. The degree to which Garcia evokes so many different elements in relatively scaled-back form is intriguing, and I look forward to seeing where she takes her sound in the future.
