New Music "Tuesday:" Andrew Bird - Noble Beast

Alright! Welcome to the first real full-blown album review. I am going to try to post every Tuesday on something new (released within the last month), and then every Friday with an old find. Ideally, these will be albums, but should time be constrained I might limit to a track review, just so I am getting something out! Anyway, without further ado:

Andrew Bird - Noble Beast [Fat Possum]


4/5

Andrew Bird holds an interesting honor in my life of music-- he was the first artist where I purchased an entire album on the basis of hearing just one song. Back in 2005, I heard "Fake Palindromes" off of Pitchfork (back when they actually did constructive track reviews). What really caught my attention was how unique that song sounded-- the looping, lush violins, his distinct singing style, the odd vocabulary choices... it was something different, I thought. While The Mysterious Production of Eggs was certainly a pleasing album, what really got me hooked was his earlier forays with his project Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire: unapologetic swing revival with ripping violin solos.

So, fast forward 11 years after the Bowl of Fire debut Thrills-- which sounds like it was recorded coming out of an AM radio-- to Noble Beast. As Andrew Bird's music has progressed, it has evolved from swing to chamber pop to violin-driven indie pop to... plain pop??

Probably the most striking part of Noble Beast was how long into the album it took to really hear a violin featured. Despite downplaying what you could consider his "signature" sound, this album is surprising enjoyable as an entirely different affair. On this album, much more attention is given to percussion and the interplay of acoustic/electric guitar. His violin playing now adds a richer layer to the music, rather than being the major focus of every song. Where the changes he made in 2007's Armchair Apocrypha bored me at times, the innovation he has made this time around is much-welcomed.

Opening with the great "Oh No," the album starts off strong, with a sound very reminiscent of his previous albums. By the second track, "Masterswarm," Bird switches gears from his trademark "bah-bums" and whistling into experimentation with Latin/Flamenco-style percussion with looped finger-picked violin that surprisingly blend together very well.

By the time the album comes to "Not a Robot, but a Ghost," I realized I hadn't been imagining the fuzzed bass and distorted guitar laced throughout the first few tracks, and that Bird had really been branching out into new territory. With a beat that would sound in place on any Radiohead album, his violin floats along with vocals that seem to channel a bit of Thom Yorke as well. This track was certainly the most surprising, but also one of the most enjoyable.

From there, the album works to its close with a string of equally excellent tracks, with standouts being "Anonanimal" which features some of his best string looping/layering to date, and "Souverians," a sprawling 7-minute epic that has more musical ideas in one song than some bands can fit on a whole album.

The only real detraction from the album is the trio of "Effigy," "Tenuousness," and "Nomenclature." These three songs are all a little too similar in tempo (mostly downtempo) and feel to come right after each other. "Effigy" and "Nomenclature" aren't all too remarkable on their own, and when strung so close together I tended to lose interest during that stretch. Also a bit puzzling are the two brief instrumental interludes in the middle of the album, which don't seem to build off of the songs before them nor build into the songs that proceed them.

Overall, Noble Beast is a very enjoyable step in the always-evolving sound of Andrew Bird. This is a great album for first-time listeners (though, make sure to grab The Mysterious Production of Eggs ASAP) and should be a pleasant surprise for most long-time fans.