“This is where we belong.”

Read Southall is talking about the first single (“Where We Belong”) from his namesake band’s new album, For the Birds. But he’s also talking about the idea that it took a few years, a very isolating 2020 and some needed shifts in musical direction to get to a place where new music — let alone the group’s crowning achievement — could even exist.Now three albums in, Southall originally started the band as more of an acoustic project. That initial release (2015’s Six Strong Sorrow) proved to be popular. Suddenly, Southall and his crew were drawing big crowds, which intensified by the time the group released Borrowed Time in 2017 (that record features the single “Why,” which currently has just under 18 million streams on Spotify).
While impossible to pinpoint, the music on For the Birds could be called, well, timeless. It’s rock’n’roll, and it doesn’t easily fall into labels like country, Southern rock or classic rock. It’s ambitious to a degree that’s rare for a guitar-driven band in 2021 — witness the aforementioned first single “Where We Belong,” an epic number that clocks in at a whopping six-plus minutes.