Music

Paste Magazine: A steady hand and a steadier voice, built from years of practicing and honing the material.

City Paper Though she’s been heralded for the earnestness and intelligence that exemplifies the best of the local singer-songwriter crowd, Birdie Busch has never quite fit in there. She’s noisy when she might’ve hushed up, nervy when most are relaxed, funny when others stay forlorn and dressy when she could be buttoned-up. This is her third year putting on the garish Nashville-themed Philly Opry show, and her new album, Birdie Busch and the Greatest Night, is similarly both opulent and genuinely odd. She’s a little bit country, and rock ’n’ roll, and folk, and whatever she feels like.

The High Key: Birdie Busch’s new record Thunder Bridge is beautiful, meditative, with an attention to production details and sonic textures that would make Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-era Jeff Tweedy envious. Recorded in Germantown, Busch’s 5th LP sees the introduction of longtime friend Jaron Olevsky (Amos Lee) as keyboardist, as well as co-producer along with her partner, bassist Todd Erk. It’s a pensive, reflective collection of eight tracks that might remind you of Lucinda, Feist, or the moods of Beth Orton, and you’ll be comforted to know that Busch is a local Philly girl too.

WXPN : Birdie Busch and The Greatest Night shows great maturity for the Philly songstress. The album was funded in part by her fans through a PledgeMusic campaign. It’s fair to say that those folks helped fuel perhaps Birdie’s most engaging album to date and one that should open the door to a whole new world of fandom.

Philebrity: Birdie Busch has been one of our favorite Philly singer/songwriters — and trust us, sadly, there are not many — for a long time now. And it’s been entirely too long since a new Birdie record was let loose in the world. But finally, the relative silence has been broken, and yesterday, Birdie Busch And The Greatest Night floated into our view and we have no intention of letting it go. A moody, spacious effort that brings to mind recent faves like M. Ward and Jessie Baylin, here’s Birdie with a full band and a supermoon on the horizon. If there’s any justice, this is the one that finally put the Bird over.

All Music Guide: Birdie Busch's third album — her first to be self-released following two records for Bar/None — is another fine helping of cozy, abundantly warm-spirited folk-pop. Pattern of Saturn is a modest offering — a mere nine songs (and two brief instrumentals) lasting a short, sweet 33 minutes — but it’s easily her best collection yet. Every one of these tunes is an absolute charmer, brimming with soul, tunefulness, and a compellingly youthful wisdom.  The whole affair is relaxed, heartfelt, and tremendously inviting. This is truly one to cherish.

Nashville Scene: Emily “Birdie” Busch marries the folkie aesthetic with something altogether more rhythmic, felt and astringent. She displays the born songwriter’s structural knack and flair for the unobtrusive hook.  —EDD HURT

iTunes: Philadelphia-based singer/songwriter Birdie Busch has one of those voices that draws you in on the first phrase and breathes you out at the end of the record. Busch and her slightly funky, sometimes quirky, and always-relaxed backing band blow through 11 slices of East Coast humor, pathos, and earnest observation that treat the word “pretense” as if it never existed. From the gentle swing of “Cup” to the bluesy Randy Newman-esque closer “Room Above the City,” The Ways We Try is so subtle in its execution that it may get lost among the bevy of louder, lamer, and more opulent acts, but if the business were fair, and the cream really did rise to the top, there would be one less employee doing the serving.

To contact Birdie Busch for articles, blog posts, interviews etc. e-mail birdiebuschmusic@gmail.com