“A lost bird is someone adopted out of their tribal community–and a lost bird is me.” This is how Denver-based pop artist Teresa Suydam prefaces their debut album, Lost Bird. The Indigenous (Ojibwe) and Filipino musician was adopted at birth, and on their first full-length project, they wrestle with the impact of growing up separated from their biological family and cultural background. In their words, Lost Bird is “A vibrant exploration of healing from generational trauma and discovering identity within self and heritage.” Intentionally released on Native American Heritage Day (celebrated anually the day after Thanksgiving), Lost Bird is Suydam’s most personal, insightful, and emotionally-charged music yet.
Using pop as a frame of reference rather than a set of conventions to follow, Suydam experiments with dance, hip-hop (thanks to guest verses from TY Avery and Tamara Bubble), rock, and even country across the nine songs on Lost Bird. EDM influences manifest in the form of heavy bass drops and ambient synths, mingling with rock and pop on tracks like “The First Ones” and “Lost Bird,” or taking the driver’s seat on “Feel The Divide”–a pure dance BOP. Synths are noticeably absent on only two songs, “Make It Out Alive” and “Save Me.” Urgent and angsty, “Make It Out Alive” gets an injection of punk rock energy from its boisterous drums, courtesy of +Ultra’s Ryan Bannigan. The bluesy twang of the guitar coupled with the muffled hand drumming on “Save Me” feel quintessentially country, as do the lyrics invoking the sins of one’s parents.
There’s a subversive quality to the way that Suydam is able to lyrically unpack deep-rooted existential dilemmas in a “digestible pop form,” as they call it. Yes, they can write a catchy pop hook (which is probably why their music has been featured multiple times on The Young & The Restless), but their deceptively crowd-pleasing melodies also act like a Trojan horse to usher in challenging discussions of agency, belonging, displacement, and identity. Lost Bird begins in medias res (to borrow a literary term) with “Intro: Reaching Out,” a recording of a voicemail Suydam sent to their estranged biological father. This introduction sets the stage and the stakes for the project, launching listeners into Suydam’s story before flowing seamlessly into the anthemic title track. “Lost Bird,” the first real song on the album, expands on the unspoken conflicts hinted at in the voice message, solidifying the intention and direction for the rest of the project with the refrain “I’m gonna find my truth/This is my point of view.”
TY Avery is a Louisiana-based artist that Suydam met through online songwriting groups, and their conversations about how to implement generational healing led to their collab, “The First Ones.” Both artists’ lyrics connect the solitary self to the greater cultural legacy of their ancestors. Returning to the question of belonging first addressed with “I know that I belong to the stars” (on “Lost Bird”), Suydam sings, “All my steps are not my own/They came before me/Don’t have a place to call my home.” While the “where” is still uncertain, the “who” is no longer an isolated individual. “Feel The Divide” voices a concern familiar to anyone who has ever had to navigate dual (and sometimes conflicting) identities. As a fellow mixed kid, this one HITS. Rejecting binaries (Suydam is, after all, nonbinary) by playing off the dichotomy of love and hate, its chorus laments: “If love and hate share a story/Then I love who I am/If love and hate both want glory/Then I hate who I am.”
The solemn (power) ballad “Power” brings the first act of the album to a close, initiating a lyrical shift towards inner peace. While the first half reckons, searches, and questions, the latter half answers, processes, and assures. On “Power,” Suydam proclaims: “I reached out to find a helping hand/But I have to do this on my own”, then reaches the conclusion, “I found my source of power.” Solitude sheds its negative context and is reframed as a path to independence. Being alone, even if not by choice, leads Suydam to a deeper sense of self. Not to sound like a corny theater kid (Redundant? Maybe.), but it reminds me of the Wizard of Oz quote, “You’ve always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.”
“Make It Out Alive” comes out of the interlude swinging, heralding Lost Bird’s second act. The more mellow “Save Me” is a quiet moment of reflection, echoing the “I’ll be who I needed” line in the previous track with the chorus, “If I don’t save me/No one will save me.” Featuring a fiery verse from Tamara Bubble, “I Have Arrived” is a triumphant finish, with Suydam declaring, “You don’t know what it took to get myself here/I faced my demons that have grown for years/Now there’s a strength that’s ready to rise/Rise rise from the inside.” By Lost Bird’s grand finale, where or to who Suydam belongs is now a moot point. They belong to themself, and in realizing that, their power is reclaimed.
Suydam’s new single, “That’s So Indigenous,” feels like an extension of the story at the heart of Lost Bird. On the dub-heavy dance track (is Suydam entering their electronic era??), they put the wisdom discovered on their debut album into practice. It’s so cool to see how the process of creating Lost Bird unlocked a part of themself that they can now tap into as a creative well. Suydam has been vocal about how Indigenous artists are among the most underrepresented across all sectors of the music industry, so this is bigger than any one musician. Plus, as the ethics of adoption policies and practices are examined under an increasingly critical lens, hearing directly from adoptees like Suydam is the most valuable perspective we can get. It takes guts to break the taboo and speak openly about the frustrations surrounding adoption, and I have to give major props and a big thank you to Teresa for sharing their experience with us.
The motif of “bad medicine” pops up a few times on Lost Bird, and Suydam explained in an Instagram post that colloquially, “medicine” can be good or bad based on the intentions behind it. This designation applies not just to actual medicine, but to words, thoughts, and actions. Lost Bird is good medicine, not just for Suydam, but for their listeners as well.
Lost Bird and "That's So Indigenous" are out now on all music platforms.
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