Album Review

Andrew Bird
Noble Beast
(Fat Possum)

Every so often throughout Andrew Bird’s career, his music transforms
almost unrecognizably, and new album Noble Beast foreshadows yet
another tectonic shift.

The album as a whole is not earth-shattering—it’s uneven, and
many tracks are relatively underwhelming echoes of guitar-heavy
Armchair Apocrypha and Andrew Bird & the Mysterious
Production of Eggs. Which is not to call it mediocre—even
these echoes of Bird’s better works are still impressive. Bird’s violin
still effortlessly wails and flutters, his lyrics still drip with
dark-humored academic musings, but the album has the markings of a
transitional project, as though Bird can’t make up his mind whether to
continue his Gypsy-folk string-pop conversation or move on to a
different dialogue.

Well within the latter category is the album’s most experimental and
thrilling track, “Not a Robot, but a Ghost.” In its first moments,
digitally processed clinking and crunching juxtapose with lamenting
woodwinds. “I crack the codes that end the war,” Bird croons over rapid
beats, as fleeting rhythmic changes and instrumental riffs pierce the
song’s skin. Bird demonstrates his artistic control by allowing these
moments transience instead of reiterating them.

In song structure and musical style alike, Bird is both a perennial
frontiersman, seeking out virgin soil as quickly as he can claim new
land, and a force of nature, disrupting that ground with his every
step.

Andrew Bird plays Mon Feb 23, Moore Theatre, 8 pm, $23 adv/$25
DOS, all ages. With Loney, Dear.