Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs
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CD Details
Artist: Andrew BirdEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-02-08
Music Label: Righteous Babe
Soundtracks:
- untitled
- Sovay
- A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left
- Fake Palindromes
- Measuring Cups
- Banking on a Myth
- Masterfade
- Opposite Day
- Skin Is, My
- The Naming of Things
- MX Missiles
- untitled
- Tables and Chairs
- The Happy Birthday Song
Music reviews of Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs
Music Review: Memories like mohair sweaters stretched and pilled faux distressed letters.
Rating: 5 Stars
Apparently Andrew Bird has had a pretty strong emergence this decade, though the hype surrounding this album was the first I had heard of him. His third album since the turn of the century and his second without the ostensible "Bowl of Fire" attached, this man has his musical goals figured out and his technique down cold. This is not in lieu of musical value or edge; if anything, Bird is analogous to that teacher who you know has been teaching 30+ years but still appears fresh and excited about his subject every time he or she lectures (is this a standard pigeonhole or anomaly? If the latter: oh well, a lucky break for a once-public-high-school-student anyway). It's all pulled off so crisply that you get the feeling that it's routine cleverness and enthusiasm, if that isn't too oxymoronic. At my most objective, the distant but engaging teacher/professor outsteps both the young, idealistic teacher who puts their soul into their job (see my Eels review) and, of course, the tired, old, bored ones who are in it for the swelling pension (I'd buy and review A Bigger Bang if it wasn't so obvious what I'd have to say about it!).
Lyrically, Bird is brilliant in the way that Paul Simon was during his Graceland era; he weaves nonsensical polysyllabic words and diverse phrases into songs seamlessly, such that on paper the lyrics look randomly assembled but in the context of the music they sound like a genius theory that the listener has somehow suddenly "got". The ingenuity of Bird's "so exorcise your cells until you're bereft/ `cause it's a nervous tic motion of the head to the left" and Simon's "These are the days of lasers in the jungle, lasers in the jungle somewhere/ staccato signals of constant information, a loose affiliation with millionaires" is lost on paper without their authors' smooth but unembellished voices and enunciation, usually (as I picture it) accompanied by a sly and knowing smile. Strangely, Bird's lyrics mainly deal with chaos - as I realized when searching for my traditional "summarizing lyric" - and chaos is far from how the music itself sounds. His tone is that of a subtle, levelheaded and eloquent mentor speaking to his disturbed and tempestuous friends.
The music that surrounds his voice is extremely controlled, often with the ubiquitous rhythmic plucking of strings, echoing whistles and chugging drums that could be a human or a machine. Does the listener care which it is? Certainly not. Bird's goal is quite the opposite of that of glitchier artists like The White Stripes or Bright Eyes. He doesn't want people to think about the person playing guitar or whether the orchestra is a multitude of extremely well trained musicians or one patient person layering over many days in the studio. This isn't even called to mind. He is the queen bee for the hive that is the ambiguously tangible orchestra, the single will that everything else connects to. Although I have a tendency to exaggerate and stretch a narrow range of music into more extreme categorizations (once upon a thicker time I considered the Velvet Underground's less accessible work "noise rock"), I still feel obligated to call the album "chamber pop", if not because the entire album's instrumentation is sweeping, epic strings, then because Bird exhibits so much control in the studio that his music never feels like a conglomeration of imperfect beings. I hate to once again reference my Eels review, but I will paraphrase my point that some artists pour too much soul into their work to be able to criticize it themselves. Meanwhile, Andrew Bird is able to look at his stuff from a distance and tweak it, remove imperfections, make it a supposed "perfect" entity - but only in the same sense that a computer is "perfect" at thinking.
That it avoids sounding like an idea and talent hodgepodge goes for influences as well. Unlike, say, Sufjan Stevens (from whom I knew in my gut Andrew Bird was quite distinct, even if I couldn't justify it until recently), Bird does not wear his influences on his sleeve. Even the song "Skin Is, My," which has a note progression that makes you say "ohh, that style sounds familiar" (I later decided with some help that it sounded Hungarian/gypsy, if not a little further north in the territory of Eastern Jewish music), only hints at some of the traditional instrumentation, instead cleverly integrating it into Bird's style of plucked strings and deep, distant kettle drums.
If this sounds deserving of album of the year, I agree. However, I (like many reviewers it seems) made the mistake of making a snap judgment based on the early string of songs, particularly 3-6, each of which used technique (ethereal whistling with unusual momentum; a repeated violin riff over crashing cymbals and drums; a mellow vocal "bum-bum-bum" that seems to try and match its accompanying plucks; a harsh cowboy movie electric guitar) as the main hook, and a catchy tune as a close second. Lord, if the whole album was like this! But the album falls prey to that elusive variable, arrangement. Since I'm no genius, I can do little more than be a Socrates here, shooting down techniques without offering any ideas of my own. "Sovay" works very well as the opening lyrical song, when the listener is ready to embrace it's lilting beauty. Its various equivalents, ("Masterfade", "MX Missiles", "Tables and Chairs") seem to increase in concentration as the album wears on. The residue of the ADD culture that bred Architecture in Helsinki kicks in. By the end of the album, we think these songs of having little more value than "cuteness". In addition, Bird throws in a strangled yell (by his low standards) of a chorus in a few later songs, which is subconsciously disturbing to the listener. As we inevitably get less involved in the album, Bird gets more involved, and the aesthetics aside, we are shocked to hear the levelheaded mentor's bursts of desperation.
Hopefully, this analysis doesn't send a polarized, mixed message about the nature of the album. It's a very good album that isn't as too-good-to-be-true as my excitement deceived me into believing from the beginning. It's like having a hand-drawn shape revealed to you that looks like a beautiful and perfect circle on the left but suddenly is marred not so much by anything jagged as the sort of slight imperfections that still make you say "aw, darn" and even though you wished the draftsman had just taken the time necessary to make the whole thing perfect, you know that's a hypercritical demand. Here's to a circle that has areas of flawlessness and ne'er anything but a smooth line throughout.
A-
Description of Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs
Andrew Bird is a previously unimaginable combination of songwriter, violinist, guitarist, vocalist and whistler. His unfailingly unique and striking music has been dumbfounding us for years. Bird's first studio album in nearly two years, The Mysterious Production of Eggs, is his second on Righteous Babe Records. The album follows Weather Systems, his critically-acclaimed mini-LP, released in spring 2003.The recording sessions for Mysterious Production saw Bird scrap the album three times and travel between studios in Chicago, Los Angeles and his own home studio on a farm in Northern Illinois. The album took final shape with the production help of David Boucher, whose credits include Paul Westerberg, Lisa Loeb, and Randy Newman. Bird plays most of the instruments on Mysterious Production, and is joined by a handful of special guests complimenting his already lush sonic palette. The results are magnificent, a powerhouse of a record dealing with nothing less than the mysteries of childhood, creativity and modern science - epic in scope and minute in detail.
Equally impressive is Bird's solo live show at which, with the aid of a sampling pedal, the songwriter takes his often dense, orchestrated recordings and rewrites them anew each night, adding hypnotic layers of instruments to his vocals and other-worldly whistling - you have to see it to believe it.
His beginnings as a violinist long behind him, Chicago-born Andrew Bird has been sculpting ever more complex and convincing musical worlds since his first album in 1997. On his fifth release, Bird offers up no answers to the mysteries in the world around us, but does take on the thornier elements with poetic verve. The instrumentation is bracingly inventive, but never for mere shenanigans or showmanship. The songs are each a perfectly formed vignette. And he's a world class whistler; not the loud summoning blast, but the supple and nuanced vibrato-laced melodicism of a master. There is no shortage of utterly riveting songs here. They work their magic on their own believable terms, without a hint of cloying nostalgia or riff-fueled seduction. - David Greenberger
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