Mysterious Production of Eggs is probably one of one of my top 10 favorite albums ever. That said, I saw Bird in concert this year, and he really butchered Fake Palindromes with his live version. Sped it up way too fast, screwed with the melody, and just made it sound like an awful cover. I think he’s bored with his older big hits and changes them for variety, but it’s unfortunately not in the right direction. His newer stuff he played “straighter”, and was consequently extremely good. Plasticities was absolutely beautiful live.
The dude definitely has music in his blood, and I’m extremely jealous and admiring of him; he’s probably my favorite current American musician.
He played in Philly last week, but I didn’t go – the tickets were a wee bit on the pricey side, esp. for a venue that doesn’t have seats. (I’m willing to stand for Liz Phair, who’s the last person I saw at said venue, not so much for him – not because I like him less, but because it’s not really “wanna stand up and dance” music.) Also it was a Sunday night, none of the people I mentioned it to was interested, etc. Next time.
Liking both Eggs and Beasts quite a bit, but Apocrypha is my favorite.
There’s a new ad – I haven’t figured out exactly what it’s for – that uses one of his songs, I don’t know which one because I suck at matching up songs and titles. It might be the instrumental bridge in “Thank god, thank god it’s fatal,” whatever that song is.
Hmm - I have liked what I have heard, but not chased him down. There’s a fine line between an eccentric diversion and eccentricity that leads to enduring work. The more I hear and read about this guy, the more it seems like he may be the latter…I may have to do a little more active listening.
Process of a faulty but effective analogy. I recommended my favorite AB album to you and you loved it*. That’s also my favorite song on that album. Ergo…
*ETA: not taking credit. plenty of people would have recommended this same album, and did.
The first time I listened to Andrew Bird, I was really stoned. My friend played A Nervous Tic Motion and then Fake Palindromes. I couldn’t even keep listening after that because I needed to stop the music and talk to him about what the lyrics meant and how ingenious the instrumentation was and all the other stuff that you talk about if you’re a talk-y person when you get extremely high and not the kind of person who just sits there lazily and says “oh man, I am so fuckin’ high.” Even when sober, I definitely appreciate the cleverness of Bird’s instrumentals; he also likes to throw around a lot of big, academic words, which is hit and miss (sometimes it’s really clever, sometimes it sounds forced.) But all-around, I think Bird is pretty good.
