Composed of Clarence Tremblay (guitar, vocals), Grace Spitzley (bass, backing vocals), and Noelle Innis (drums), Birds Of Prrrey has been a part of Montreal’s underground scene since 2023, offering a contemporary take on the Riot Grrrl aesthetic. Following a well-received EP, Yet, We’re Still Growing in Place (2024), and several compelling live performances, the trio presents Peace Love Homicide, a debut album where urgency, fragility, and intensity coexist within a already well-defined songwriting style.
Recorded at Holy Mountain Studio in Montreal, the album retains an energy reminiscent of the band’s live performances, which are often marked by an atmosphere of intensity, joy, and closeness with the audience. But here, that energy shifts toward something more intimate, giving the record a more introspective dimension than what the band had hinted at on stage in recent years.
The album opens with a noise-based introduction that culminates in applause, as if the chaos were briefly coming to a standstill. Next comes “LOL (Lots of Love),” which explores the theme of losing oneself within a toxic relationship. With ethereal guitars, building intensity, and controlled moments of release, the track immediately establishes a sonic language more ambitious than that of the band’s earlier releases.
The fourth track on the album and single, “The Water’s Just Fine,” marks a shift in energy toward a more spontaneous and emotional style of songwriting, centered on simple gestures, offbeat encounters, and everyday conversations where anticipation becomes an integral part of the connection.
Throughout the album, the band plays on the duality that shapes its identity. The urgency of punk and Riot Grrrl regularly gives way to more ethereal dream-pop passages, where guitar textures take on as much importance as bursts of distortion. Echoes of Sleater-Kinney can be detected in the tension of the structures, while the more hazy atmospheres evoke Magnog and Slowdive, without the trio ever getting bogged down in mere imitation.
One element stands out, however, on this new album: the subtle incorporation of brass. Trumpet and saxophone appear notably on “Sentimental,” never dominating the mix but adding a discreet melodic layer that enriches the band’s sonic palette. Following Track 12, “Milk Bone (Tell Anyone)” serves as a focal point. Over a long chord that allows the soundscape to breathe, the band opts for a more stripped-down approach, driven by a vocal crescendo that heightens the song’s intimacy. The track is imbued with a sense of nostalgia and fragmented confessions, where the lyrics oscillate between personal vulnerability and more diffuse reflections on identity, guilt, and relationships with others. This formal restraint lends it a sense of synthesis, as if the tensions and excesses of the previous tracks were finding here a fragile yet confident point of balance.
Behind its deliberately provocative title, Peace Love Homicide stands out above all as an album of healing. From one track to the next, Birds Of Prrrey gradually lets go of resentment in favour of reflections on self-esteem, the grieving of relationships, and the need to move forward. The wounds remain, but they no longer dictate the narrative: they become the living fabric of a work that transforms fragility into strength, and rupture into a starting point. Here, acceptance does not feel like an ending, but rather like a hard-won, almost luminous clarity at the heart of chaos.
Above all, this album confirms the trio’s ability to capture the intensity and intimacy of their live performances on record, while opening up a more introspective space where every tension now seems better controlled.
Standout tracks: “Sentimental, Lost in the Sound”
photos by Rachel Mogrhrabi
