It’s a cliché she better get used to, but Naomi Hamilton – aka Jealous of the Birds – should be jealous no more, for with this new EP she’s really taken flight into a bigger and brighter world. The Armagh singer-songwriter always exhibited ambition, but while previous releases had a homespun, insular feel to them, the five tracks that make up Wisdom Teeth are expansive and worldly in a way that her writing previously hasn’t been. Maybe it’s the confidence of knowing that people all around the world are now listening, or perhaps it’s just a maturity in her writing, but these are songs unafraid to speak their mind, to take the listener on twists and turns, all the while displaying a satisfyingly ‘classic’ sonic palette.
Lead track ‘Marrow’ could easily have featured on an album like Dusty in Memphis, with a warm and soulful sound, Hamilton intoning lines like, “You call me peninsula, an island no more”. ‘New York has a Lump in her Throat’ finds her comparing The Beatles to Mozart, while ‘Blue Eyes’ offers up some taught and angular funk rock. ‘Kosiskelu’ is gossamer and ethereal, and ‘Clementina’ is a suitably epic closer, bringing to mind the Radiohead of ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’ or ‘The Tourist’.
If there’s a failing here, it’s that the EP is like a tasting board, rather than a satisfying meal. Directions are offered up, but not followed up on, as the next track jumps into something different. But, if we’re being honest, this isn’t the worst problem to have, and it certainly whets the appetite for a full-length album. And when it does finally arrive, we’re going to have to come to the difficult realisation that Jealous of the Birds no longer belongs to Northern Ireland, she’s spread her wings, and now she’s part of the whole wide world.
And the world is a better place for it, frankly.