Kat Flint - Dirty Birds

Kat Flint is a guitar-strumming singer-songwriter with a beautiful voice. Yes, another one. Bur maybe not. To be fair, there are several things at work here absolving her from the stale nebulae of acoustical monotony ruining park benches, open-mic nights, dimly-lit rooms, and your life. The first thing is impossible to classify—you can call it voice, heart, or it—but there’s certainly an appealing sincerity in Flint’s music. Dirty Birds, her debut album, sounds like the melancholic outburst of an introspective woman, be it a gently voiced, alt-folk/country kind of outburst. Though the songs are strong when stripped down to their lyric-melodic bone (particularly Christopher, You’re A Soldier Now and Ohio), a large part of the album’s charm is owed to producer David Peters’ embellishments. Vocal harmonies, piano hooks, melodicas, and the occasional kazoo really bring the songs to light. In the end, though, it’s Flint’s candor that runs through it all. [Jorge Marticorena]