The problem used to be replicating in a live setting what artists were putting on the record, and still is to a large degree (ignoring for a moment the wonderful technological advances bands use to round out their sound, or pass as competent, as the case may be).  In the case of Chicago’s Andrew Bird, his great challenge goes in the opposite direction: translating his live act onto record, or at least making an album that’s as astounding in some regard.  As a one-man orchestra with perfect rhythm and incredible dexterity, his ability to loop rhythm, lead, bass, lead vocal, lead whistling and five other parts, and still be atom-clock accurate would make ‘Love Me Do’ interesting for up to an hour, but what happens when we can hear but not see him?

Live loops in the studio aren’t that impressive when you could just as well track it and overdub.  Bird has to be more than a master of loops and effects on his albums, and he is - namely an arranger and a songwriter.  You can forget flash and dash on the upcoming Armchair Apocrypha, because what you will find is not someone who needs to impress you with impeccable timing or dexterity – instead, it’s a pure celebration of song craft and arrangement.

Keller Williams, hippie-chick icon and acoustic gunslinger, has the same battle to fight, but where he goes for pure virtuosity and ‘how’d-he-fucking-do-that?’ stunts, Bird is more interested in establishing a mood, or many moods.  Each of the 12 tracks on Apocrypha inhabits different territory, but the collective whole achieves an exuberance and restrained joy that not one single track possesses, to the credit of his skills as arranger.  The cuts also performed live on Fingerlings 3 were undeniably good in skeleton-form, and I smiled plenty (not laughed, just grinned) during ‘Sweet Bread’, but the difference between that and the fleshy Apocrypha version (now called ‘Dark Matter’) is the difference between a contact high and a big, smooth, garden-fresh hit.

The album opens well, if not uncharacteristically, with ‘Fiery Crash’, complete with a guitar riff that sounds like a forgotten Byrds track.  It doesn’t take much of a break for much of the first seven tracks, and is that kind of song suite that makes me feel good enough to pump my fist and dance on my fraying carpet, if only it weren’t so weird to do by myself.  Then again, no one’s looking…

The short instrumental track 8, ‘The Supine’, is a milepost for a sweeping mood change.  It’s a downshift from here to the end, but nothing is diminished, just re-arranged.  The remaining tracks, up through the mournful instrumental finale ‘Yawny At the Apocalypse’, are just as arresting as the first septet, though you have to sit down and let them wash over you – they don’t translate well into two-step.

Armchair Apocrypha is void of any bad songs, and hardly even a throwaway, or a lesser effort can be found.  Bird’s violin (or is it a viola?  I can never keep those two straight) takes center stage, but the full band arrangement on most tracks adds keyboards, guitar and unnamable effects to Bird’s list of ‘things-I-mastered’.  (His ability to sing beautiful lark-style is a given, hence the parentheses.)

Admittedly, I don’t have much of a frame of reference here, having gotten my first taste of Bird at Lollapalooza, and giving only a few perfunctory listens to Music of Hair and Fingerlings 3 in the interim.  They’re great, but that’s not important now - Apocrypha stands alone, and my exposure to it has just changed my weekend plans from sleeping in and listening to the CD’s that I haven’t gotten around to yet, to waking up early and going out to find as many of Bird’s albums as I can afford.  My backlog can wait.

It’s not that I’ve been hamstringed by Joie’s adoration for Armchair – it really is outstanding, and it’s no surprise that someone with her good taste thinks so too – but good thing that we’re in agreement so I don’t have to avoid her when we run into each other at the Cat Empire show tomorrow.

Release date: March 20, 2007
9/10
Fat Possum

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