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.