Must-Listen: Andrew Bird
By Nick Fadoir
Andrew Bird’s popularity is an anomaly. In a climate that rewards trends and painless listening for dispassionate listeners, he has made a career out of mining bygone genres (jazz, swing, folk), unusual skills (whistling) and instrumental prowess (classically trained in the violin) to birth a totally distinctive and remarkable sound that’s somehow been given the commonplace label of ‘pop.’
With eight albums since 1998 (three with his band Bowl of Fire, and the last four as a solo artist), Andrew Bird sounds like no one else. And it could be said (because I’m about to say it now), that he is a genius with melody. Even his lyrics are more melodic than expressive. He’ll find words with the absolute perfect amount of syllables and resonance to enhance the purely musical element of his songs. “In the salsify mains of what was thought but unsaid/the calcified charismatists were doing the math/It would take a calculated blow to the head/to light the eyes of all the harmless sociopaths,” he sings on “Oh No,” from his last album, 2009’s “Noble Beast.” In which case, it all becomes musical because it’s all based in melodic rhythm.
And Andrew Bird seems to literally have melodies spilling out of him – melodies that get stuck in your head for a week and then slip under your skin forever. Take a song like “Armchairs,” from 2007’s “Armchair Apocrypha.” Seven minutes of creeping and sweeping violins, plucked guitar, plunked piano, and Bird singing/whistling about time as a crooked bow. The hulking song moves through three movements, returning back to the first after the second and then shooting off into a third following the repeat of the first. In total, one can hear as many as ten different themes of music going on in each of the three movements. Some are repeated a few times, some only once; but after those seven minutes of heaven end, they’ll all invariably be lingering in one’s musical memory, just waiting to be refreshed.
Andrew Bird will not reward the detached listener. He’ll probably bore them. But for those pop music fans wanting to dig into a world brimming with melodies and wordplay, Mr. Bird has a lifetime of wonders to offer.
Listen to Andrew Bird’s music:
“Oh No”
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“Armchairs”
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I <3 Andrew Bird. Great choice!
Thanks for the awesome article. I love reading it!