In the same way that Queens of the Stone Age and Quicksand deftly blend heavy guitar riffing with shimmering vocal melodies, Bluebird made catchy pop songs driven by heavy layers of guitars, that could also just as easily be outtakes from Swervedriver or Jane’s Addiction. Bluebird was comprised of such divergent personalities that any song from its most traditionally structured rocktune, to its freeform droning jams seemed to be tugging in a variety of directions all at once. This friction resulted in a catalog of 4 albums and multiple EPs that boldly revitalized rock formalism.
The Bluebird retrospective collection Saguaro (1995-2003) gathers three discs’ worth of peak performances culled from the band’s critically…