Sienna Thornton / Birding Out LP Black Vinyl

Sienna Thornton / Birding Out LP Black Vinyl

After a long silence since the release of 2018’s ‘Cyanide Thornton’ album, Narrm-based songwriter Sienna Thornton returns with a new full-length album, ‘Birding Out’. 

Says songwriter and vocalist Sienna Thornton on the recording process:

“Birding Out started taking shape at the end of lockdowns in Melbourne. Around this time I had started getting chronic migraines, which resulted in loss of and altered vision, hallucinations and mood swings. Thankfully antidepressants helped lessen all this and allowed me the space and self permission to start working on music on my own. 

My previous band Cyanide Thornton had disbanded at the beginning of lockdowns, and the album we had worked on for years never saw the light of day. I felt a lot of heartbreak over that band ending and how straining that recording process had been. 

Making this album was to heal that, to tap into a space of spontaneity and to start to trust myself more as a musician, writer and composer. My focus in creating the songs was to trust what I was receiving and not to overthink, to be patient and understand that things would fall into place and what I needed to understand I would. 

I guess that's a theme of the album - leaning into the felt, the intuitive, the flow of creativity and being aware of how much we have been conditioned by patriarchal colonial power hierarchies and structures not to value these ways of knowing, creating and being.”

The album features Sienna on most instruments, with a range of guest performers including Shaun Fogarty (tenor sax), Emma Stuart (voice), Georgia Knight (voice), Mei McCraken (voice) and Luke Brennan (acoustic guitar).