Alright, you folks ready for another weird one? If so, you should try Andrew Bird on for size. He's an artist that I first stumbled across last year - an endearingly sullen and idiosyncratic man, once known for hanging out with the Squirrel Nut Zippers and piloting a rock and swing-influenced band of his own, now known for applying his multi-instrumental skills to a more sparse and unique brand of indie folk/pop. The exact words are tough to come by, because when a guy has an affinity for plucking away at his violin, whistling into the mic with amazing vibrato, chiming away on a xylophone or glockenspiel, and using both acoustic and electric guitar as a base for this strange instrumental combo, genre naming becomes difficult. Bird's music is the sort of thing that you just have to hear from yourself, because just being told about it will only nag you with curiosity. At least, it worked that way for me.

Here's the thing, though. Despite having the cards stacked in his favor in terms of the mouthfuls of wordplay and weird imagery that make up his lyrics, and the arsenal of unexpected sounds available to him, Bird's 2005 album The Mysterious Production of Eggs took an extremely long time for me to really start liking it. The first few times through - eh, it was an interesting conversation piece, but so many of his melodies seemed to wander and I had a hard time grabbing onto the central hook or theme of a lot of the songs. Particular sections of songs would fascinate me, only to give way to something else that wasn't as much to my liking, and there were really only a handful of tracks that I felt were solid. This is a guy who resists the temptation to create a "wall of sound" on every song, choosing instead to let things build and unfold in unexpected ways (or sometimes even to dismantle a song in progress). So don't go confusing him with Sufjan Stevens or anything - unless of course you're more of a Seven Swans fan and you wouldn't mind hearing a more irreverent version of that approach. Classical music is an influence in some ways - but Bird is quick to point out that part of the fun for him is derived from the abuse of the violin, scratching and pulling and plucking to get different tones and textures. The xylophone and whistling often pair up to create an eerie, old Star Trek-like sci-fi tone, and Bird's voice unintentionally references one of rock's most well-known weirdos, Radiohead's Thom Yorke. At first, I was tempted to think that this would be what it sounded like if Yorke ever made a solo album, but then, the sound isn't that reminiscent of Radiohead, aside from a little electronic twiddling in one song. It is what it is - I can't easily sum it up with a reference to other artists.

Seeing Bird perform live (opening for Nickel Creek) made me appreciate the album a lot more, once I took into account the forethought and layering that went into even the most subtle songs. In concert, Bird uses a multi-track pedal to record and play back the rhythmic and melodic bases of most of his songs, acting as a "one-man band" (though he does have a drummer to back him up). Such layering may not be so impressive in studio, because lots of artist play different parts and different times and layer them all on the record. But it shows that he knows how to create a captivating ensemble out of only two or three (sometimes just one!) of his own instruments. Combine that with the skewed child's play and political eyebrow-raising apparent in his lyrics, and for the most part, you've got a winner. Maybe the lyrics give me mental pictures that I'd rather not deal with on occasion (Radiohead does the same), and maybe sometimes I think he does the "man with just a guitar and a bland melody" thing for too much of one song. But I still think Bird is a fascinating creature, whose work is meant to reward the most diligent and whimsical of listeners.

(Untitled)
The record starts with one of two brief instrumental pieces denoted by squiggles on the album's back cover, instead of actual titles. This one is a sweeping, spacious performance, with swelling strings and Bird's whistle floating about in space until the whole thing crescendoes to a sudden halt.

Sovay
I was getting ready to consider my next plan of attack
I think I'm gonna sack the whole board of trustees
All those Don Quixotes in their B-17's...
Andrew must have been absent on that day in Rock School when they teach you what kinds of songs not to start your album with. He's definitely thumbing his nose at the rule book when he comes waltzing out with this mumbling little acoustic number based around a nonsense word. Not that it's a bad song - I like the swaying repetition of its 6/8 rhythm, plucked out on an acoustic guitar (with the violin occasionally chiming in), and the rambling lyrics that describe delusions of grandeur that he's apparently too lazy to do anything about. "I was getting ready to threaten to be a threat", he skulks at one point, and that one line tells us a lot about Bird's cheeky sense of humor - he's not laugh-out-loud hilarious, but he knows how to sideswipe the listener with a lyrical gem that takes the brain a few seconds to catch up with. There's lots to catch the ear even in this mellow song with its restrained chorus - the smacking of wooden blocks in the background makes for interesting percussion, worlds like "proclivities" will excite English majors in the audience, and any CalTech students out there will probably get a kick out of the reference to "Ride of the Valkyries".

A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left
Stretched out on a tarmac
Six miles south of North Platte
He can't stand to look back
At sixteen tons of hazmat...
This one's like a song within a song. It starts and ends as a slow, guitar-driven tune (acoustic for the intro and electric for the outro) that would likely be unremarkable on its own, although the lyrics about scientists postulating, "You're what happens when two substances collide, and by all accounts, you really should have died" are highly entertaining. What's brilliant is the sudden, authoritative strumming of the electric guitar that leads into an authoritative rhythm of clicking and plucking and whistling that takes the listener for a tango all over the room. Bird is at his most idiosyncratic (and catchy!) here, doing his own echoing background vocals in places, singing "bum bum bum bum" right along with the plucking of his violin strings, and nervously stuttering as he repeats the title of the song, leaving "of the" and "to the" hanging without a resolution, which would normally annoy me, but here I figure it's all a result of the nervous tic. Don't ask me what the hell this song's about, because I haven't the foggiest. That doesn't stop it from being the most ingenious piece on the album, though.

Fake Palindromes
Whiskey-plied voices cried fratricide
Jesus, don't you know that you could've died
You should've died...
This might be the closest thing to a traditional "rock song" on the album - it's still got a catchy violin riff that comes whooshing down out of the sky to bumrush the listener, but the drums and electric guitar are a lot louder here than they are in any other song. It's also the album's most compact song, at around three minutes. Other than being a rhyming exercise for Andrew, I'm not sure what to make of the umpteen different ways to rhyme "died" in the bell-tinged verses, but hey, where else are you going to hear lines as amusing as "My dewy-eyed Disney bride" and as creepy as "Swapping your blood with formaldehyde?" The mention of "monsters" seems to interrupt the flow of the verse, and that and the seemingly sadistic lyrics ("I'm gonna tie your wrists with leather and drill a tiny hole into your head") are what I don't like so much about this song. Something about it has a "mad scientist" sort of appeal, so it's still a good song, but I always have to cringe at the mention of a girl who's "got blood in her eyes for you". (First Blindside, now this - what is it with the bleeding eyes lately?)

Measuring Cups
When you talk about the hand of glory
A tale that's rather grim and gory
Is it just another children's story that's been declawed?
When the tales of brothers grim and gory have been outlawed...
More of the "Bum bum ba bum bum" stuff, sung in time with the violin plucking, on this mellower song - I guess I'm not the only one who likes to sing along and mimic the sound of musical instruments. More brilliant songwriting is here - I can almost picture Andrew as a confused elementary school student being told by his teacher, "Get out your measuring cups and we'll play a new game, come to the front of the class and we'll measure your brain". He goes on to make obtuse references to censorship and following the leader, and it's hard to tell if this is political, or just some weird childhood issues being worked out. There's a nice pun in the line "the tales of brothers grim and gory have been declawed" - the Brothers Grimm are, of course, known for their fairy tales, but the Disney-ized versions we know of them now have been way toned down for children, and then there's the macabre author/illustrator Edward Gorey. (See, all that time spent in the school library in junior high paid off!)

Banking on a Myth
From Star Search to the Philharmonic
He'll get you there with Hooked on Phonics
He's the one to know
Doesn't matter if you blow...
This track has one of the most attention-getting examples of Bird's method of violin playing - he sets up a mechanical rhythm of 6/8 by plucking the strings, creating a tense, slightly off-key base to work from while the lead violin wriggles about nervously and a sinister electric guitar part (think Cake) adds a slight "caper film" sort of flavor to it. The song appears to be about some sort of theft or market scandal - possibly even the selling of fraudulent talent to an audience who doesn't know any better. Now that I look really carefully at the lyrics, the style and tone here do actually remind me a bit of something that Thom Yorke might have written, just due to the cynicism conveyed and the overall sense that the masses are buying into something cold, mechanical, and ultimately very stupid. One thing that always irks me is when this fun, oddball rhythm suddenly runs aground and gets replaced by the straightforward blaring of an electric guitar in 4/4 for the song's coda. It ends in a nice wash of gentle strings, but it just seems like a part dropped in from an entirely different song.

Masterfade
I saw you standing all alone in the electrostatic rain
I thought at last I'd found a situation you can't explain
With GPS, you know it's all just a matter of degrees
Your happiness won't find you underneath that canopy of trees...
OK, stop trying to rhyme things with "Masterfade". Don't think I didn't think of that joke. Moving right along... we've got a pretty mellow folk song here, with a mellower violin presence than usual and a beautiful whistle solo dropped in at different points. The way Bird fingers each note on the acoustic guitar is notable for how delicately the whole thing flows - it's one of the more subtle moments on the album, but it's pretty. For all of the nonsensical language presented, this is actually one of the album's less cynical and more heartfelt songs, I think. There's a conflict between the zeroes and ones, the machinery that seeks to chop the world up into bytes for easy transfer of information, and the messier aspects of nature, something that Andrew seems to be scared of losing as he speaks of how it all gets encoded: "If the green grass is 6, the soybeans are 7, the June bugs are 8, the weeds and thistles, 11". There's tons of great verbiage and wordplay here that would take me a while to interpret - I love the references to Mah Jongg (because really, who the hell can remember all those tiles) and drinking chocolate lemonade (I actually met someone once who claimed to like it), though the expletive "I mean Christ, who knows?" at the end seems like a harsh way to end an otherwise gentle song.

Opposite Day
And today was supposed to be the day
Molecules decide to change their form
Laws of physics lose their sway
And youthful indiscretion now is suddenly the norm
With the good kids sprouting horns, yeah, yeah...
Ready for some apocalyptic sci-fi madness? Well, it comes in a more subdued package than you might expect, with its whimsical whistling ushering in strange clouds, and Andrew singing in a very low tone of voice about how he had planned to wake up and find a society's misfits suddenly in charge and the powerful people "in prison or in hell", but only turning out disappointed that he didn't morph into a completely different creature without legs and arms. This is Bird's absurd vision of the end of the world, apparently, and it's a humorous one, even if it culminates in a big letdown when everything is revealed to be as mundane as it was before. Electronic influence works its way into this song, in the form of these little boxes of crackling static that seem to collide with each other during the chorus and the strings swerve up and down ominously. Just when you think the song has come to its final resting place, Andrew jumps in with a little acoustic non-sequitur, taunting us about how there's something more to this song, but he's not authorized to tell you - "Hey listen, I just work here. I'm under explicit orders to dare not speak its name." Random, but funny.

Skin Is, My
Let it be printed on every T-shirt in this land
On the finest of cottons and the hippest of brands...
Here's where a teeny bit of Andrew's swing influence comes into play - there are no horns and the rhythm isn't explicitly swing, but the drums remind me very much of a swing band, and the song is definitely quick and danceable. There might be a slight amount of Latin groove to it, though what might normally be the romantic sound of a flamenco guitar is instead replaced by the addictive sound of Bird's violin plucking. It's a complicated rhythm that seems a little "off" from itself even though it's all in 4/4, and in the midst of a strange ode to white, dry skin, Andrew celebrates lovely sounds and office phones that go "Brrrrring!" and macramé birds of prey. So yeah, once again, I don't get it - funny how my favorite songs on the album are the ones I can't even guess at it. Listen for the sweet, madcap string plucking solo in the middle, and I defy you not to be hooked by the sheer weirdness of it all.

The Naming of Things
Hey, just look at the mess you made today
Didn't really think it would get this bad
Hey, feel like you're living in a Russian play
Where it seems like you made everybody mad...
After the high of the previous song, the rest of the album can sometimes feel like a long, slow comedown to me, but it still has its merits. This song, mostly plain and acoustic at the beginning, really takes its time to unfold into a midtempo rock song, where Andrew criticizes someone for making snap judgments because "You weren't there that day for the naming of things". I love the way his voice warbles and wobbles as he lingers on that line - it's unfortunate that the verses don't really do as much to get noticed, leading me to overlook what I'm sure are meaningful lyrics. Probably the highlight here is another section of violin and guitar playing during the bridge that seems like a romantic dance across the floor - this song seems to morph through three or four different moods, so when those little interesting snippets replay in my mind later, I have to stop and think for a minute in order to realize it's all the same song.

MX Missiles
I thought you were a life-sized paper doll
Propped up in the hardware store
Propped up on the front lawn watching the parade
Of those legionnaires with two-by-fours
As they're marching off to war...
I like the high-strung, waltzing guitar and the ghostly whistling at the beginning of this song, so it's a pity that this setup is abandoned in favor of a rather minimalist song that thumps along on light guitar plucking and barely noticeable percussion. I have a tough time being patient with this one, as the lyrics sound rather cruel, wanting to know how easily a certain person can be damaged. Maybe the intent isn't malicious, so much as just wondering if they're faking it when they take insults and hardships in stride. Andrew utilizes some interesting chemistry metaphors dealing with carbon vs. calcium as he considers his litmus test to see "if you're really MX missile proof", so the song makes for a good case study that helps us get into Bird's head, but in terms of sheer listening enjoyment, it's one of my least favorites.

(Untitled)
Another little interlude. This one's less cinematic and more erratic than the first, kind of echoing the mood from "Opposite Day" as the violin wriggles around uncomfortably. Bird is really stellar with that instrument and I wouldn't mind hearing more instrumental stuff, just with him fooling around.

Tables and Chairs
'Cause listen, after the fall there will be no more countries
No currencies at all, we're gonna live on our wits
We're gonna throw away survival kits, trade butterfly-knives for adderal
And that's not all...
This "sleeper hit" buried near the back of the album is actually a bright spot that just took me a while to notice. After two fairly low-key songs and an interlude, this one doesn't seem to do much to pick up the pace at first, but it slowly manages to win me over with its cheerier take on the end of the world. "Don't you worry about the atmosphere", he assures us, and then goes on to inform us that when all of the apocalyptic stuff is done, the financial institutions will crumble and the barriers will be demolished and it'll basically be one big happy birthday party. The best part? "There will be snacks." The exuberance with which he goes on about the snacks is one of the album's most endearing moments, sure to be quoted by anybody who notices it. The tune might run a bit long, but it's a good finale.

The Happy Birthday Song
It's a giant and long cliché
And that's why I want you to sing it anyway...
Oh wait, except that wasn't the finale. Unfortunately, we have to end on this slow, plodding note with a song that can't make up its mind about any sort of a definitive melody, other than the dirge of violin plucking that slowly moves it along. It's interesting for the first minute or so, as Bird encourages a companion to sing the old "Happy Birthday" song to him as if he'll never get to hear it again, but it's got the least interesting lyrics and music of any song on the record, and despite the cuteness of the string arrangement and the strong hits on the xylophone to mark time, it just seems to drag on and on without really going anywhere. It would have been better, for me anyway, if this album had ended on more of a "wow" note in terms of the instrumentation used.

It might have been those last few songs, and my reactions to odd bits of the earlier songs, that kept me from falling in love with this record for nearly half a year, but I'm finally arriving at that point. There's a joyful clash between innocence and mischief here, a gleeful abandon of the rules of instrumentation as applied to a pop record (or even most indie records), and it's even a huge growth from Bird's past work, as far as I've been told (it's his fifth album). I'd recommend it without hesitation to more adventurous listeners, so long as you can handle the fact that experimentation doesn't dominate every track (i.e. there are a few spots that actually sound quite normal). Everyone else probably need not apply, but then, you might find a catchy novelty hit in "Skin" or "Nervous Tic" to brighten an otherwise dull week while you're waiting for your own personal Opposite Day to arrive.

ALBUM WORTH:
(Untitled) $.50
Sovay $1.50
A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left $2
Fake Palindromes $1
Measuring Cups $1
Banking on a Myth $1
Masterfade $1
Opposite Day $1.50
Skin Is, My $2
The Naming of Things $.50
MX Missiles $.50
(Untitled) $.50
Tables and Chairs $1
The Happy Birthday Song $.50
TOTAL: $14.50

Website: http://www.andrewbird.net

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening