Andrew Bird, Andrew Bird And The Misterious Production Of Eggs
A delightfully eccentric violinist, songwriter, and professional whistler peers curiously at a world twirling off its axis
Andrew Bird is an eccentric artist — not in an abrasive or challenging sense, but in a wonderfully absurd way, like he's peering onto a world that's twirling slightly off its axis. The Chicago-based Bird, a classically trained violinist and "professional" whistler with more than a touch of Rufus Wainwright in his voice, is a superb songsmith and, more impressively, plays nearly all of the instruments (among them glockenspiel, vibraphone, piano and finger-picked acoustic guitar) on Eggs.
Toying with, and subverting, chamber music, traditional English folk, gypsy-rock and baroque-pop, Bird proves himself part musician, part inventor: gorgeous, complex melodies, often set into motion by his expertly bowed violin, take their time building and then linger, as if in a state of perpetual motion, long after the last notes have faded. In contrast, his erudite, abstract lyrics teeter on the brink of chaos ("Stretched out on the tarmac… / he can't stand to look back / at sixteen tons of HAZMAT…/ you're what happens when two substances collide / and by all accounts you really should've died," on "A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left"). The best songs here — "Sovay," "Masterfade," "Nervous Tic" — allow Bird's dark musings to bounce around unrestrained, cushioned by his dreamlike sonatas.
