Music for the weekend

Singer/ songwriter/ violinist, Andrew Bird, is a very different musician from past recommendations. Andrew updates the traditions of small group swing, German Leider, and New Orleans jazz, as he mixes gypsy, folk, and rock elements into his distinctive style. Really, he knows no boundaries in his compositions, both lyrics and arrangements. Moreover, he displays phenomenal ways to play the violin; not solely using a bow. And he whistles. I tend not to like being whistled at, but Bird makes it fun.

Scott Holter discusses both Bird and his newest CD release, Armchair Apocrypha, due in stores on Tuesday, 20 March...

Strip away the music of an Andrew Bird song, and you're left with brilliant prose ("across the great chasms and schisms and the sudden aneurysms"), vignettes about mentally fending off plane crashes, infiltrating characters like the kings of Macedonia and Lou Dobbs, and titles such as "Yawny at the Apocalyspe." It's hard to believe that, really, his music reigns, but when Bird adds understated acoustic guitars, Wurlitzer and Rhodes, and his own mesmerizing pizzicato violin, his songs take on a progressive mood all their own. Bird's tenth album (and his debut for extraordinary Mississippi blues label Fat Possum) is perhaps his most diverse, expansive, and resourceful yet, catering to a half-dozen genres of music while exploring storylines that are naïve ("Dark Matter"), candid ("Fiery Crash"), and blatantly comical ("Armchairs"). Making no palpable effort to crack the conventional with overflowing melodies and love songs, Bird instead latches up the intellect to create tiny packages of literature that always leave you thinking -- and snapping your fingers at the same time.

Really, I enjoy this entire CD so much I had no idea which song to share. So I settled on two, the opening song, Fiery Crash, and the CD's closing song, the all instrumental, Yawny At The Apocalypse. Enjoy!



I have listened to and enjoyed 6 or 7 different CDs by Andrew Bird; in Armchair Apocrypha, he puts together all his diverse and disparate musical interests and elements into one cohesive and coherent whole. It is a stunner.

I am, as always, interested to read your comments.
-- David M Gordon / The Deipnosophist