Healin’ the Pain is State Bird’s fourth release, third full-length album, second studio collaboration with Ian Pellecci engineering, second release as a four piece, and it’s a huge departure from the pop folk of their earlier work. It’s also State Bird’s most adventurous to date. Somewhere along the way, State Bird became a rock n’ roll band, Heaven sent and Hell bent.
Forged in the belly of Ohio, recorded live to tape with minimal overdubs at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn, NY, and mixed at Tiny Telephone in San Francisco, Healin’ presents a loud and raucous sound totally it’s own, angry and confident and crass and cocksure, with guitars that snarl and scream like big black alley cats doing unmentionable things to each other. They crackle and hiss like reworks.
And let’s get this out of the way right now: If the vernacular of the people makes you squeamish, read no further, because this ain’t no pussy shit. It’s a new beast. It’s dirtier, tighter, pissed off. And it’s chalk full of tracks that curse and spit and guzzle warm beer. This is the death rattle of the band that came before, and what a sound it makes! Healing the Pain is a lone black wolf howling in the night, ready to die.
The State Bird boys are all groweds up. They drink beer and smoke weed. They wake up before it’s light out and work long hours. They hang drywall and bag groceries and pour concrete. They spend long nights in the little studio that Hartzler built in a garage by the mobile home dealership a few years back. And those long nights show. Healin’ the Pain doesn’t hide a thing, it’s all there, every cough and scratch. You can hear the spit hitting the microphone.
Their latest album is the result of four musicians pursing their craft honestly, recklessly, stubbornly, getting almost nothing in return, save the music itself. I knew State Bird when they cared what you thought of them, that band is no more. “I have life. You got none.” -State Bird, Healin’ the Pain
