Flutterby
Butterfly Boucher
A&M Records

Sometimes records give glimpses into something really special, something so awe-inspiring that it’s impossible to remove the music from steady rotation in your car’s CD player.

Sometimes you hear a record and it just makes your ears say to your brain, “Damn, this sh** is incredible. I’ve found the next best thing to, um, whatever it is the best thing in the world is.”

Sometimes listening to a new record is like that.

Sadly, listening to Australia native Butterfly Boucher’s debut A&M release, Flutterby, isn’t one of those etherial, mind-blowing experiences. Don’t misread this, though—Flutterby isn’t so awful as to beg comparisons to Avril Lavigne, but the album falters where it very easily could have soared.

See, Boucher is actually a very talented musician. Since she was a teenager, she’s played music in several bands in her native country, most of the time with her siblings at her side. She arranges, records and plays almost every note on the album. Boucher isn’t big on studio musicians—she’s a do-it-herself type of songwriter.

In a pop musical world so content with hit-producing, big-shot executives manipulating every aspect of a song in order to make it appealing to the masses (and thus make a few more bucks), it’s always refreshing to see songwriters taking a stand against the status -quo.

That being said, Boucher’s musical skills don’t show as clearly as they could have on Flutterby.

The album’s lyrical content is reasonably mature. Boucher sets herself apart from the MTV female singer-songwriter brigade by writing songs about surrendering fears, packing up and leaving, loss and isolation. Much of the content seems to be directly influenced by Boucher’s almost gypsy-like adolescence, traversing the expanses of Australia with her various musical outfits.

Boucher’s music is guitar- and piano-driven—like on the underdeveloped “Never Leave your Heart Alone”—with the expected riffs and breakdowns. Nothing too new, nothing too innovative. The sounds on the album feel like they ought to be on the soundtrack to any number of teenage sitcoms (read: “The OC”) so more pop fans could get their hands on them.

The album’s best tracks are the single “Another White Dash”— which recently got attention on MTV’s (tongue in cheek) “Advance Warning” program and is receiving some rotation on MTV2—the eloquent “A Beautiful Book” and the airy album finale “Drift On.”
eryn@red-mag.com