Taking Flight

Bedouine

Bird Songs of a Killjoy

Listening to Bedouine feels like riding a bike down an empty street on a warm evening. L. A.-based singersongwriter Azniv Korkejian makes peaceful folk songs that move with ease. On her second album, Bird Songs of a Killjoy, she picks up where her 2017 debut, Bedouine, left off, combatting the harshness of heartbreak and loneliness with softness. For Bird Songs of a Killjoy, it’s hard to not make a connection between the song’s motions and how birds move. Like a maple tree dotted with red buds in early spring, birds flock to this record. Their presence is a constant, emphasizing the freedom that Korkejian sings about: “I’ll look away so that you can fly away,” she sings on the stunning “Bird.”

Another constant is how sublime Korkejian’s voice sounds. A warmth radiates from her as she fluidly moves between sadness and playfulness. On “One More Time,” a relationship ends and loneliness feels enormous as she sings, “I don’t think I could really say leaving has felt different from staying.” But when the chorus hits, her grief turns into acceptance and she lightly repeats, “I’m gonna let you be.” On brighter-sounding tracks like “Sunshine Sometimes,” “Matters of the Heart” and album highlight “When You’re Gone,” Korkejian moves buoyantly alongside bouncy instrumentation, determined to get somewhere, but willing to enjoy the journey along the way. And what a beautiful sounding journey it is. (Spacebomb Records)

Why were you inspired to use bird imagery in your songs?

I don’t really know why. In some ways it felt like lowhanging fruit. It’s a really easy metaphor to make, and at times I felt kind of guilty about it. That’s partially the reason why I named the record what I did, because I wanted to wear it as a reaction to being insecure about it. I certainly didn’t set out to make a bunch of bird metaphors.

What do you want listeners to take away?

I feel like there’s only so much that I can do, and [the album is] truly just me expressing these really deeply personal feelings. If people relate to it, that’s great, if they don’t, that’s okay too. But I wanted the album to be really fluid. I wanted to be a little bit more conscious about the ways the songs transition into each other, and I think that’s something that I will continue to be more conscious of.