Andrew Bird previewed

Andrew Bird
Riviera, Chicago
Friday, April 20, 2007

Local boy Andrew Bird is going green on his latest tour, which brings him to Chicago for the Green Apple Music & Arts Festival. The Earth Day celebration spans three cities, including New York and San Francisco, and takes place in more than 60 venues. In addition, Bird and his crew are employing environmentally sound practices while out on the road, including using bio-diesel fuel and keeping the menu organic.

Out and about celebrating the release of Armchair Apocrypha (Fat Possum), the follow-up to 2005’s The Mysterious Production Of Eggs, with his trusty violin and those magical lips that seem to whistle mini sonatas en tow, Bird is earning accolades aplenty for the latest in his dozen-strong discography.

The disc’s cover cheekily features the backside of a — you guessed it — real-life feathered friend, but the music within loses any trace of snarkiness. Probably his most accessible release to date, Bird still religiously has a thesaurus at close range when writing — from opener “Fiery Crash,” to which anyone flying post-9/11 can relate, to “Scythian Empires,” a discourse on the war in Iraq. Not all of Bird’s compositions are topical, and the cascading waves of gloriously sentimental sounds distract from the lyrics anyway.

Known for looping his way into a full band, Bird will undoubtedly warp and weave incandescent textures into the recorded material, essentially giving the songs a rebirth of sorts. Hopefully, he doesn’t change them around too much. They’re pretty terrific the way they are.

— Janine Schaults

Click here to download “Heretics.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly