Birdie Busch’s 2006 debut, The Ways We Try, was a sly updating of neo-folkie verities. It was the work of a New Jersey-born songwriter who attended college in Miami and soaked up funk and Caribbean music. The album revealed Busch’s feel for rhythm — it rocked and swung, but gently — and her lyrics managed to be simultaneously disaffected and wide-eyed.
Penny Arcade finds Busch again working with producer Devin Greenwood, who adds rubbery bass licks and atmospheric keyboards to thirteen songs that display Busch’s ear for the gnomic. On “Huff Singers (North Philly)”, she takes what could have been a banal subject — the healing properties of gospel music — and turns it on its head with these lines: “Sing me something heavy/That in the end doesn’t take up space.” She creates an effective two-chord rocker called “Hold Ya”, and “Rabbit’s Foot” features a sublime middle section that turns a chiming-clock melody dark and conflicted, ending with a series of chromatic chords.
“Bender” is sung as if through the fuzz of a hangover, yet it sounds as guardedly optimistic as the rest of Penny Arcade. “Go Go Gadget Heart” sports a ricky-tick chord progression the Lovin’ Spoonful might have used. And just to prove she’s a rocker, she covers Steve Miller’s “Wild Mountain Honey”, and pulls it off. Maybe next time she ought to tackle Spoonful guitarist Zal Yanovsky’s loopy, indecisive “As Long As You’re Here”. It’s her kind of song.