Whitney Cline’s ‘Rollerbird’, under her new project Astara Black, is not a crowd-pleaser. That’s the point. This is a song that does not care if you sing along. It does not wave a hook in your face. It unfolds on its own terms — dense, symbolic, and a little difficult by design.
The concept alone pushes it out of the norm: inspired by roller pigeons, birds genetically wired to nosedive mid-flight. A species built to fall. The track hovers around a minimal, repetitive motif, a single note pulsing like wingbeats. There is no big chorus, just a steady pull downward, into introspection, abstraction, and maybe some emotional masochism.
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In a sea of songs designed to grab attention in the first 15 seconds, Rollerbird glides past with zero regard for trends. It sounds strange, because it is strange. It is basically the musical equivalent of a left turn on a one-way street — and that’s exactly why we’re talking about it.
SCORE: 7.3/10
Not for everyone, but for those who get it — it hits in a weirdly poetic way.
Indie Boulevard Magazine 