For the uninitiated, Andrew Bird is a brilliant, genre defying multi-instrumentalist from Chicago. Having picked up his first violin at age four, he is now a virtuoso of the instrument, sometimes playing in classical mode, at other times plucking it like a guitar.
He has an eccentric stage presence, surrounded by some bizarre paraphernalia such as huge rotating gramophone speakers. Most pieces involve the live recording of musical parts on one or more instruments. These are then looped and played back for him to accompany with other instruments such as guitar and glockenspiel – as well as his haunting vocals and whistling – building layers of sound.
Many of the songs are from his excellent new album Noble Beast – of particular note the wonderful ‘Anonanimal’ and ‘Natural Disaster’ that he says could have been inspired by the moss, bogs and rocks of Scotland.
He is a prolific songwriter, and there’s a broad range of influences that inform this idiosyncratic indie folk. There’s ‘Sweet Matter’ that he explains is the original version of ‘Dark Matter’, and is all about searching for the location of the self which for him has implications for which parts of an animal one eats as well as mad cow disease.
The tempo shifts up a gear when he plays the Wild West romp that is ‘A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left’ and the sizzling ‘Fitz and the Dizzyspells’.
A brand new half-finished song – possibly about the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 – proves to be one of the loveliest moments of the night. That’s until a long and languorous ‘Weather Systems’ mesmerises the audience and ends a truly great performance.
Having seen him in an earlier incarnation with the Bowl of Fire several years ago, it is clear that in his solo career Bird is now exploring more interesting and uncharted musical territory, and that he is at last receiving the recognition that he deserves.
He has an eccentric stage presence, surrounded by some bizarre paraphernalia such as huge rotating gramophone speakers. Most pieces involve the live recording of musical parts on one or more instruments. These are then looped and played back for him to accompany with other instruments such as guitar and glockenspiel – as well as his haunting vocals and whistling – building layers of sound.
Many of the songs are from his excellent new album Noble Beast – of particular note the wonderful ‘Anonanimal’ and ‘Natural Disaster’ that he says could have been inspired by the moss, bogs and rocks of Scotland.
He is a prolific songwriter, and there’s a broad range of influences that inform this idiosyncratic indie folk. There’s ‘Sweet Matter’ that he explains is the original version of ‘Dark Matter’, and is all about searching for the location of the self which for him has implications for which parts of an animal one eats as well as mad cow disease.
The tempo shifts up a gear when he plays the Wild West romp that is ‘A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left’ and the sizzling ‘Fitz and the Dizzyspells’.
A brand new half-finished song – possibly about the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 – proves to be one of the loveliest moments of the night. That’s until a long and languorous ‘Weather Systems’ mesmerises the audience and ends a truly great performance.
Having seen him in an earlier incarnation with the Bowl of Fire several years ago, it is clear that in his solo career Bird is now exploring more interesting and uncharted musical territory, and that he is at last receiving the recognition that he deserves.
