My cohort and I approached the steps of the Larimer Lounge in Denver, Colorado, as Jake Ewald opened the door and greeted us with a playful and cheery demeanor. His voice rang out, “just the men I was looking for.” We laughed and walked into a room filled with the sounds of an off-key acoustic cover of Iron Maiden’s “Two Minutes to Midnight” being screamed by a man with an acoustic guitar, and a chorus of half drunken bar goers.

Of course Ewald shrugged off the scene and walked us to the venue’s green room. Shortly after, Ewald warmed up and played two stripped-down acoustic renditions of songs off of his latest album, Birdie.

Birdie is the second full length offering from Ewald’s solo project, Slaughter Beach, Dog. Originally created to quell a prolonged period of writers block, Slaughter Beach, Dog grew from there with his first album, Welcome, and an EP released this past summer, Motorcycle.jpg. Ewald has continually refined his sound on each release and Birdie is no different.

As Ewald explains, the production on Birdie was more intentional this time around. He said he wanted the arrangements to be sparse and let the songs speak for themselves. As a result, Ewald’s voice and an acoustic guitar lie at the heart of most of the songs on Birdie. While there is an array of other instruments present on the record, they don’t co-opt the song. If anything, they add a greater sense of warmth to Ewald’s already matured song writing.

Ewald’s ability to paint intimate scenes of past events make Birdie a record that feels homely.  Songs like the albums opener “Phoenix,” feature a linear, albeit disjoined stream of memories that chronicle the connection of two lovers. These disjoined memories are what Ewald humorously attributes to his “inconsiderate memory”. He elaborates that he could never remember important things, but he could always remember details that didn’t matter. He says these details are often the most interesting part of songs he writes though.

You can here more about Birdie in our interview posted below.

Buy Birdie here.