Sunday, September 10, 2006

Bic Runga - Birds (special edition)

An interesting experience to be listening to this, now. This special edition adds two songs to the original version and rearranges the entire tracklist to give the album a far more hushed, nocturnal feel, apparent especially in this version's opening ("Captured", "Birds", and "No Crying No More", before launching into the three best songs on the album - and the three that most made me liken it to classic singer-songwriter fare of the 60s the first time round - in "Winning Arrow", "If I Had You" and "Say After Me"). (The new songs, "Somewhere In The Night" and "Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart", are both nice enough but nothing special.)

The other new aspect of this 'special edition' is a dvd with five of the album's tracks done live (in which Bic is earnest and pretty good), as recorded at the Civic Theatre in Auckland in '05, and music videos for "Winning Arrow" and "Say After Me".