Daylight's for the Birds

While most people are out partying until 4AM in the city that never sleeps, the members of Daylight's For The Birds used the night time from December 2005-April 2006 to create the band's own brand of song based atmospheric music. "At the time of making this record, all of us were going through some sort of break-up of long term relationships both personally and professionally. I think a lot of that personal emotion that everyone was feeling individually came out during the writing process," says Daylight's For The Birds drummer Brad Conroy, who used to be the drummer for The Boggs. For the core members of Daylight's For The Birds, the night provided the perfect setting and outlet to express the heavy emotional baggage that comes with the end of what started as a new beginning. With the end of a relationship or a professional venture, there's suddenly a chunk of time that used to be filled by another person or venture that is all of the sudden free.

The members of Daylight's For The Birds decided to take the newfound free time to converge and play songs that expressed the emotional heaviness of their current individual states. The quiet of night time in studio's and basement apartments provided the perfect setting to find the melody and words in the cacophony in the band member's heads. "The record is all about the vulnerability of nights spent alone when you're lost in your own head," says Daylight's For The Birds co-founder and guitarist Jay Giampietro. During the recording process, the band's thoughts drifted freely into a cloud of noise. In the wee hours of the morning, Daylight's For The Birds collectively came up with several personal songs about love, loss and new beginnings. The end result is a new beginning with Daylight's For The Birds' debut release, Trouble Everywhere.

"We belong to no one," singer Amanda Garrett exclaims with her clear soprano voice that sounds pitch perfect with the twinkling keyboards and tightly structured choruses on the first track "To No One" on Trouble Everywhere. The song firmly sets the tone for the ten songs of Daylight's For The Birds declaration of independence to express all the anxiety and purity of emotion that are best expressed in the wee hours of the morning. There are the song structured pop elements found in bands like Asobi Seksu, but Daylight's For The Birds incorporate their own brand of abstract, meandering keyboards and explorative guitar riffs ala Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine.

"Bands like My Bloody Valentine and Ride communicated emotion through atmosphere in an abstract way. And while there certainly is that aspect to our music, I think we take it a step further by adding pop hooks and at times anthemic choruses," says Phillip Wann. While Daylight's For The Birds respects their shoegazer forefathers, they continue to impress people with their own brand of shoegaze that you can belt your heart out too at anytime of the day.

Daylight's For The Birds formed right before On!Air!Library! broke-up in the summer of 2005. Wann happened to be writing a tune called "Daylight's For The Birds" as the break-up happened, and didn't want to quit playing music and abandon the tune. So Wann invited On!Air!Library roadie and touring bassist Giampietro to work on the music with him in his Manhattan basement apartment. It was good.

Instead of coming up with a new name for this new band, Wann and Giampietro decided to name themselves after that tune. This method of creating music together further inspired the duo to create a soundtrack to the late night/early morning. Furthermore, the uncertainty of starting from scratch gave the music the two were churning out a sense of emotional immediacy and intensity that refined and transcended the inventive experimental rock that On!Air!Library was praised for.

Wann and Giampietro recruited ex-Boggs drummer Brad Conroy and former On!Air!Library singer Claudia Deheza, and proceeded to record its first songs with producer Steve Revitte (The Liars, Black Dice, The Double). After initial sessions for Trouble Everywhere began, Daylight's for the Birds recruited an additional singer to compliment Wann and Deheza's vocals. Something in the universe must have been smiling when newcomer Amanda Garrett arrived, as she quickly became the band's lead singer, taking over vocal duties for Deheza when she chose to bow out of the band to pursue motherhood and other creative projects. The newly reorganized group quickly tested their chops playing several buzzed-about shows in New York with Calla, Prefuse 73, and The Silversun Pickups, and then went on to finish Trouble Everywhere earlier this year with producer Andy Hong.