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ACL: Andrew Bird
Sometimes you get thrown in the deep end. I had never seen Andrew Bird before catching his set Saturday afternoon at the AT&T Blue Room stage, but what I learned about him beforehand sounded intriguing: a sparkplug of the ’90s swing boomlet as part of the Squirrel Nut Zippers-turned-experimental music wunderkind. Songs with titles like “Yawny at the Apocalypse” and “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head To the Left.” Ten albums, give or take, including his latest, “Armchair Apocrypha.” And, intriguingly, whistling apparently figured heavily in his musical repertoire.
Well, the guy can dadgum sure whistle—a piercing, pure, multi-tonal wonder of a whistle that can carry the weight of a string section or a saxophone.
As for the rest, Bird and his two bandmates are unquestionably versatile and mecurial, able to turn on a musical dime (one of the musicians doubled on keyboards and drums, sometimes simultaneously). Bird himself is adept on violin, guitar and even xylaphone (what is it with xylaphones at this year’s ACL?!).
But I could never find a way to ground myself inside Bird’s music. One song, “Simple X,” featured abrupt and seemingly arbitrary changes in tone, tempo and key. Another, the aforementioned “Nervous Tic,” featured a flurry of lyrics that seemed to skate across the icy surface of the melody. Bird’s often cryptic or downbeat lyrics, sung in a voice eerily reminiscent of David Byrne, seemed daunting, although audience members swayed along happily to the beat.
Other critics have described Bird and his music as “opaque,” “off-kilter pop” and “inscrutable,’ so perhaps I’m in good company.
But so were the fans that flocked (sorry, couldn’t resist) to Bird’s performance. Their appreciation of Bird’s superior musicianship seemed to make questions of accessibility suddenly irrelevant.
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Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: ACL Festival
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By pinballio
September 18, 2007 5:52 PM | Link to this
genius.