By Matthew “Mocondo” Garcia
Since the mid-90s, Andrew Bird has been making a career of whistling; a career founded on violin-based genre-stretching pop that’s frequently gorgeous and always the right kind of challenging, the kind that usually brings about very full, very well-rounded, just very good old fashioned music. Inevitable comparisons to Owen Pallett, aka Final Fantasy, aka the guy who did the string arrangements for Arcade Fire and Grizzly Bear, whose simple association with them put him in arguably a larger indie public eye, are bound to happen. Both, after all, do utilize violins and classical training, love complicated arrangements and the looping of different riffs to build an entire song structure and both pull it off almost flawlessly. However, between the two, Andrew Bird’s creations are much sharper, often more upbeat and differentiating (not to mention that he came before, and his influence is all over Pallett’s work); whereas Pallett prefers to let things develop, uncaring about instantaneousness, a virtuous patience through every measure. His songs could easily fill a church, stained glass windows accentuating notes, whereas Bird’s are more suited to a concert hall, huge reverberating acoustics enveloping audiences.
For Bird, it all comes off at first as effortless, an instinctual approach to writing songs with an aw shucks it worked results. And indeed, he does have this imbibed instinct to incorporate instruments in incredibly involved song arrangements that call you back for repeated listens. Maybe Bird learned to seek these things out during his training at an Illinoise university, or because he was originally trained under the Suzuki method at a young age, where it’s believed students come off as better, more sensitively enduring people if they have this gorgeous music in their environment, or maybe this music is just imbued in his brain, an unknowable talent that we can only wish for. The facts are these: Andrew Bird has created some spectacular music over his career, such great stuff that he deserves more attention than he gets, and, with his newest release, Noble Beast, proves he can do all over again.
If Noble Beast never reaches the fullness and expansion of some of Bird’s previous albums, that can easily be forgiven, because it is such a complete record, its themes and ambitions clearly defined and executed, paced perfectly. It starts off simply, violin strings stinging and whistles blowing, before Bird comes in with on “Oh No” with his story, his immense vocabulary, and such bizarre images that are such fun to really think about (”It would take a calculator blow to the head/to lie all the ideas of all the homiosociopaths”) . He knows when the song should swell, should quiet down, should just give you a taste of how it’s going to conclude or change tempo, and serves as a fitting introduction to the rest of the album.
He can make you dance with his story of “Fritz and the Dizzyspells,” a sort of song that is incredibly happy, but doesn’t go to that overload of joyousness that Noah and the Whale are often responsible for. “Tenusousness,” has you looking over your shoulder with its ghostly oohs and aahs and jazzy bass line, while “Not a Robot, but a Ghost,” practically the centerpiece of the record, finds Bird throwing in the bells and chimes of a darkly depressing rock song that’s frightfully interesting, and changing the mood of the entire record. He swells emotions with “The Privateers,” where he strives to be remembered and spoken “in the present tense,” pining for some long-lost in person, love in the time of insurance salesmen. “Souverian,” a 7-minute epic, which has a perfect building up of strings and guitar and unexpected releases from the tension that probably would not have been taken after by any other songwriter.
There’s this nice little fold that Noble Beast wedges itself into, under a more folkish sensibility than most of Bird’s previous records. The genres here spread out as far or as wide, so we’re missing these brilliant shifts from gospel to rock to baroque to Latin and to jazz so prominent on The Swimming Hour album. But that’s all right for this record, because the themes and ambitions here are so focused on a more homely perspective that anything else might have appeared out of the ordinary and out of place, jarring and unnerving for not any particular reason.
Noble Beast is filled with the things that make Andrew Bird Andrew Bird, though it may be more comfortable and rooted than what you’d usually expect, as if Bird wanted to challenge the listener more than he wanted to challenge himself. The songs are still fantastic all around and the ideas are present and, in the end, Bird really is more folk than baroque, which may or may not be better, but makes Noble Beast such a great listen.
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