Featuring Birds

Sam Coomes--50 percent of Quasi, alongside Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss--is depressed. Like, really depressed ... on Featuring "Birds" he’s become Mr. Morose.... Quasi’s sound--drenched in fuzzed- out keyboards and loopy tempos, like a warped carnival--cuts against the grain of Coomes’s obsessive sadness, elevating it to the level of black humor. And when Weiss contributes vocal harmonies, the entire room brightens up.