Awash with melody, urgency, and upbeat guitar lines not unlike Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, and others in that avenue, Washington DC’s Golden Birds (formerly known as Carrier, before a dispute with a band by the same name) mingle artful indie rock and dub influences, with echoes of Animal Collective and The Talking Heads floating somewhere in the background. 

All the things that take most bands of this genre three or four releases to accomplish are laid out in the band’s first full-length “Carrier” (a Europe-only release of their first US EP “Heart And Arms” released under their original name). This release was followed-up by the acoustic EP “Transamerica”, which coincided with the Fifty Tour which the band undertook in the summer of 2005.