by Daniel Erenberg

Andrew Bird is a musician who, historically, has flitted between genres like a hummingbird. For a while there, with each record released, you never quite knew what to expect. So it’s a little bit dismaying that his new release, Noble Beast, sounds so much like an Andrew Bird record. All the signs are there that it is clearly him being himself: the ever-present whistling, the pizzicato violin, the abstract lyrics, often referencing science and history. Noble Beast is an Andrew Bird record to an almost distracting degree. But I guess it’s a good thing that Andrew Bird is so damn good at what he does. It still results in a fantastic record.

Noble Beast isn’t without its missteps though. It has a weak beginning, with two pop songs surrounding the flamenco-flavored “Masterswarm.” Andrew Bird, as it turns out, can’t really handle flamenco, despite a few wonderful violin flourishes, and when he’s attempting to write a radio single, he sounds annoyingly like The Shins. The Shins have never changed anyone’s life, despite what Garden State told us, and neither will these songs. The lyrics on this album take the opposite route, by being almost willfully abstract. Just try to make sense of a line like “Proto-Sanskrit Minoans to porto-centric Lisboans/Greek Cypriots and Hobis-hots who hang around the ports a lot.” I don’t have the time or the Encyclopedia to figure out that line. Now, I like abstract lyrics. Most of my favorite lyricists practically never include literal images in their songs, and Andrew Bird is included on this list. The one upside to lines like this, though, is that they add much greater weight to the few simple lines on this record that you don’t need to read into, like “They took me to the hospital/They put my body through a scan” or “Still my lover won’t return to me,” which is repeated throughout the cathartic “Souverians.”

Most of this album is wonderful though, bitching aside. “Effigy” burns with a wonderful rustic tone, and a brilliant melody. “Tenuousness” washes over you quite majestically, with a swirling violin arrangement and a ghostly vocal. Bird gets electronic with “Not A Robot, But A Ghost” but warms it with a spectacular woodwind arrangement. And, best of all, is “Anonanimal,” which is a monster, whose arrangement is complex beyond the point of belief.

If you want more monster arrangements, there’s Useless Creatures, the bonus disc on the deluxe edition, which is a second full-length new Andrew Bird album, this one composed entirely of instrumental songs. This includes some of Bird’s best songs ever (“Carrion Suite,” “Dissent,” “You Woke Me Up!”) and some of his most self-indulgent as well (“The Barn Tapes”) but that’s to be expected and enjoyed. It turns out that Andrew Bird just being Andrew Bird is pretty great on its own merits.

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Tags: Andrew Bird Music Review Noble Beast Whistling
February 2, 2009 at 5:39pm ∞