The Birds of Marsville by Friendly Rich

For fans of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Melt-Banana, musique concrete, all things avant garde, and birdwatching, The Birds of Marsville by Friendly Rich provides a wonderfully weird field guide to all manner of fantastical flying beasts. This concept album collects the calls of seventy six fictional birds, each transposed into a musical motif performed by various components of a marching band alongside a homemade carnival organ. Rekindling the curious excitement of early modern scientific observations, the sight of each bird feels more like an alien encounter than anything we could experience here on earth. Fanciful though this comparison may seem at first glance, in the time since writers like Darwin were recording the many species of the tropics, thousands of such species have disappeared completely, taking on a mythical, almost unbelievable quality for people reading these books today. Likewise, when you tell your grandchildren about all the birds you could see in your backyard when you were a kid, they won’t believe you either. Your stories will sound as fantastical to them as this album sounds to us.