Sarah Levins writes lyric-forward folk-rock songs and delivers them with a voice that sounds like an amalgam of Indigo Sparke, Julia Jacklin and Lucy Dacus. If you have paid any attention to indie rock in the last five years, you will almost certainly have heard songs that sound like hers. Yet North Birds, Levins’ self-released debut EP, stands out for its possession of many of the things the Triple J-coded Australian singer-songwriter scene today lacks: subtlety, patience, care and frankness.

That frankness accounts for some of the most potent moments on the EP. ‘Are You Having Fun?’ is an immediate highlight, with a rollicking jam-band dynamism that propels Levins’ run-on sentences: “See the violence they try to spin as / necessary machinery / gather up the drones and phones and / throw them in the water with me”. Instrumentally, the track is refreshingly wild, filled with string freakouts and big crescendos that fall away on cue and punctuate Levins’ blunt conclusions: “Feel how the earth starts to crack, tectonic / filling the gaps with kaleidoscopic / money and smoke / are the butt of our joke / we’re not laughing… no more”. On ‘Butterfly’, that blank-face sense of humour returns to yield some of the EP’s strongest writing: “You should know that / even though I laughed / I never really thought / that joke was funny / ha ha ha ha ha ha ha”.

The rest of North Birds traverses more wistful territory. Above quiet, restrained arrangements, Levins probes the liminal space between intimacy and apathy, finding a few perfect couplets along the way. There’s an entire world inside the second verse of ‘Arm’s Length’ and it ends with devastating stillness: “All the words I never said, I traced along your back”. On ‘Night Ships’, Levins follows it up with even more magic: “Whatever happened the year you went quiet? / I couldn’t hear through the wall”. It is a rare songwriter who can operate with such masterful economy. Levins wears her lyrical influences on her sleeve – at times vividly evoking Phoebe Bridgers and Sling-era Clairo – but her incisive words are all her own.

I only listened to North Birds for the first time yesterday (2 February 2024 for those reading in the future) but as I sit with the music while writing this review, I find it is only sounding better with time. Levins’ songs feel precise and lived-in. With each listen, her delicate note choice and phrasing becomes more apparent. There is a confidence that underlies her performance, one that emphasises the emotion and humanity at the core of each song. On ‘Butterfly’, there is a moment that captures this confidence in full view. Levins sings “now there’s nothing left to hide / don’t you know when a butterfly dies / it won’t come back to life”, and just as you anticipate a final line to complete the stanza, she instead pauses for a bar to let the dry joke sink in. In the song’s video, at that arresting moment, Levins stares wordlessly at the camera, daring you to recognise the absolute control with which she writes. North Birds is an EP of pure intention and fine craft; an immense debut from a ray of hope in the Australian indie scene.

77

Sam Gollings

3 February 2024