THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The sophomore album from Detroit synth-rock duo The Messenger Birds, Tragic Comedy picks up right where the band’s debut LP Everything Has To Fall Apart Eventually left off — a world in isolation, outlandish conspiracy theories on an infinite feedback loop, overwhelming amounts of death and grief and uncertainty, and storylines that sound so hyperbolic and satirical that the only logical conclusion would be that we are all just living in a simulation and none of this is real.
“Tragic Comedy started out as a natural carryover of themes from our first record and then became an animal of its own,” Parker Bengry and Chris Williams of The Messenger Birds explain. “The more objectively sad and deranged our lives and the world around us became, the more it felt like an inside joke we weren’t in on or some elaborate prank someone was doing to us. A lot of what we were writing was sort of like ‘Oh, this would be really funny if it wasn’t true’ and took on this Nathan Fielder-esque dark sense of humor, which maybe isn’t the most healthy way to process life-altering traumas, but it’s what worked for us.”
The album’s title track was also the first song the band finished writing completely for the album — and naturally set the tone for what the record would actually become. It starts with a dream-like, otherworldly guitar lullaby that transports you to this alternate reality where nothing makes any sense, and the more you try to make sense of it, the less it makes any sense at all.
“We really built the rest of the song around that concept when the big groove kicks in with the drums and fuzzed-out guitar and bass,” the band adds. “We kept progressively adding more layers and weird atmospheric background noises until it escalated into a symphony of feedback and church bells and a cathartic wall of noise. Hopefully the end result feels like jubilant chaos.”
The Messenger Birds are not a rock band — they’re just two guys. But there is more to this two-piece than meets the eye and a lot of noise to back it up. The Messenger Birds have earned a reputation for an abrasively loud and energetic live show, and their Detroit brand of alt-rock seamlessly blends monster riffs, catchy hooks, intricate melodies, droning synthesizers, and unapologetic lyrics into a coalescence of sub-genres, a sound that all at once is difficult to categorize as simply alternative rock. At face value, they have often drawn comparisons to Queens Of The Stone Age and Highly Suspect. As you dive deeper into their catalogue, however, you find little traces of Nine Inch Nails, Manchester Orchestra and even Explosions In The Sky.
The band’s 2020 debut LP, Everything Has to Fall Apart Eventually featured singles like Phantom Limb and the haunting and apocalyptic Play Dead (Just for Tonight). Written almost entirely in the fall of 2018 and recorded in early 2019, the album feels eerily like a premonition of a world on the brink of global pandemic and teeming with political unrest.
Tragic Comedy builds upon these themes and features the melodic and anthemic Midwestern Mirage, the infectious rock groove of If No One’s Going to Look My Way, the frantic and anxiety-filled punk rock fever dream Do As You Please, and occult-centric ode to fringe Internet culture Bad Faith Actor.
Appearing alongside household names like Tame Impala, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Judas Priest, Korn, Turnstile and Rise Against, The Messenger Birds have taken the festival stages at Mo Pop and Louder Than Life. They have also supported All Them Witches, ’68, The Fall Of Troy and many more on various tour dates since 2019.”
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