Andrew Bird’s a frustrating guy. He’s obviously a ridiculously talented individual; a virtuoso on violin, a dab hand on piano and a peerless whistler to boot. His albums, too, are superb- his latest disc Armchair Apocrypha is one of my favourite albums of 2007. But despite this manifestly winning combination, he’s never as good live as the evidence suggests he should be. His choice of setlists is an issue; although heavily weighted towards the new material, his tendency to plump for obscurities for crowd-pleasers can overwhelm all but the most hardcore Bird fan. A more notable weakness however derives from his inability to decide quite what he wants to be. Variety’s a fine thing, but his wild veering between straight-laced indie balladeer and experimental sonic manipulator (often in the same song) leads otherwise perfectly decent songs to succumb under the weight of unnecessary self-indulgence. It’s a shame, as when they do work, his multi-instrumental looping exercises deliver outstanding results (see-Palindromes, Plasticities, Dark Matter) but his unfortunate habit of stretching and overlaying a song to excess too often proves his downfall.
His best moments come when he ditches the pretentiousness and dons his “mad music professor” guise on songs like Why? and Dr. Strings. Relying on charisma rather than the loop pedal, they communicate his remarkable musical skills far better than faffing about with fancy-pants technology ever will. It just goes to show: sometimes, less is definitely more.
(Photo: Guillaime Michelet (Flickr))
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