The Fire is on the Bird by Jackson Jackson

The Fire Is on the Bird, Jackson Jackson's first album, came out through EMI in Australia in March 2007, and it's the sound of two Melbourne oddballs refusing to pick a lane. Harry James Angus, the voice and trumpet of the Cat Empire, handles the mic and the horn; Jan Skubiszewski, a producer and composer, produced the record and built the beds underneath.

The duo called their music a collision of hip-hop, afrobeat and psychobilly, and that's about the size of it: rhymes and brass over grooves that won't sit still. "Eliza" was the song that reached the countdowns, "My Robot" went out as an iTunes exclusive, and the album earned a nomination for Best Urban Release at the 2007 ARIA Awards. They'd built their crowd the modern way, through Myspace, YouTube and late nights on the ABC's Rage.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.