Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Andrew BirdBrand: Baker & Taylor
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2007-03-20
Music Label: Fat Possum Records
Soundtracks:
- Fiery Crash
- Imitosis
- Plasticities
- Heretics
- Armchairs
- Darkmatter
- Simple X
- The Supine
- Cataracts
- Scythian Empires
- Spare-Ohs
- Yawn At The Apocalypse
Free Music Notes for Armchair Apocrypha
Free Music Review: armcha (on the moon)
Hit: 5 Stars
goodness, this is where we all surrender our allegiance right? I mean if you haven't already. first of all, Bird swaps his percussionist of 10 years, scrupulous and astonishing Kevin O'Donnell, for the loopier and seemingly hungrier Martin Dosh. and now they're really playing off each other, reciprocal looping, a couple of mirrors facing off and multiplying everything in between. anything crossing their field of reflection - Dosh's junk kit, crumpled paper and cardboard, flocks of airborne plastic bags, burning oil wells and other furniture - all multiplied. I've got to say, the looping is way supernatural to me, like Bruce Lee and Han fighting in the hall of mirrors, so I'm pretty mystified.
I never know what to do with those fancy paper cuff things they use to wrap up CDs. this one I might as well fold into an airplane and fly it into the furnace because Armchair Apocrypha won't have much down time on my shelf.
after touching down like a hijacked comet, the album turns straight into Imitosis: a rocking reworking of what Sesame Street would no longer allow him to perform. yeah, through some IP legality thing, the 7 magic words were struck from Andrew Bird's live set. but after a snip and stitch, the song is just folded back in on itself, and the result is brilliant. there's now more of X-files than Ennio Morricone to the glocken-whistle. and the pizzicato technique even leans a little into Marc Ribot's barrio, where the kids are still really nasty.
then it's the same sort of recycled brilliance later on Dark Matter. a little of the former Sweetbreads survives the meat grinder, building a colossal crescendo from the beginning. but it's more like some hog-butchering overalls and surgeon's scrub greens hacked up and triple stitched together into a mythical firearm, somehow invisible but still bearing the bloodstains of its former matrix, and even snarling, "like something catching fire!"
and there are the Armchairs. as the title track it's certainly expansive and beautiful. profoundly stirring, with something just as disturbing, like a kind of deep seated mental illness and the lead ballast of piano holding it barely in the atmosphere. I know this isn't the 1st comparison to the ghost of Jeff Buckley, but he really seems to channel him here!
The Supine and Yawny pick up where his Masterfade left off; considering digital apocalypse, stargazing, cloudwatching, not so much soporific as just resigned in a speechless way, and maybe with a mild concussion. so how do you reconcile the tension between sincerity and aloof, ironic detachment about our state of affairs? well, Andrew Bird goes post-apocalypse. pretend it's already done and we can just start over already. like Noah or Noah's dove. in practice, he's more earnest in his efforts, though it's good to pretend for an hour or so.
if anything is missing it's probably more of the pastoral tenor that really emerged with Weather Systems and is still there on the latest Fingerlings. but as long as he's outfiddling in his field, I don't think there's anything to worry about, that muse is here for good. good. I do miss some of the old Bowl of Fire characters and fixtures though: somepeople, the calypsos and old Harry Smith stuff. but with like a dozen albums out, there's now enough room for the music to move about within its own mythology. you can still be self referential even if some of the good old boys were incinerated in the apocalypse.
Armchair Apocrypha Poster
Filled with layers of violin, glockenspiel, vocal harmonies, guitar, piano, and the most amazing whistling, Armchair Apocrypha is the latest from Andrew Bird (Chicago, IL.). Bird enlisted his touring drummer Martin Dosh (a.k.a. Dosh) and several other musicians to create this melancholy collage of gentle pop songs. Primaily a violinist, Andrew Bird has pioneered his own distinct sound as an eclectic instrumentalist and songwriter."Violinist-guitarist Andrew Bird goes further, filling his richly ornamented yet understated alt-pop with allusions to actual lab work." - Jon Dolan - BLENDERStrip away the music of an Andrew Bird song, and you're left with brilliant prose ("across the great chasms and schisms and the sudden aneurysms"), vignettes about mentally fending off plane crashes, infiltrating characters like the kings of Macedonia and Lou Dobbs, and titles such as "Yawny at the Apocalyspe." It's hard to believe that, really, his music reigns, but when Bird adds understated acoustic guitars, Wurlitzer and Rhodes, and his own mesmerizing pizzicato violin, his songs take on a progressive mood all their own. The Chicago Bird's tenth album (and his debut for extraordinary Mississippi blues label Fat Possum) is perhaps his most diverse, expansive, and resourceful yet, catering to a half-dozen genres of music while exploring storylines that are naïve ("Dark Matter"), candid ("Fiery Crash"), and blatantly comical ("Armchairs"). Making no palpable effort to crack the conventional with overflowing melodies and love songs, Bird instead latches up the intellect to create tiny packages of literature that make always leave you thinking--and snapping your fingers at the same time. --Scott Holter
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