Andrew Bird: Noble Beast

Andrew Bird
Noble Beast
Fat Possum

Just to have all the biases out on the table, Andrew Bird put on probably the best concert I saw in 2008—a free show, no less, in Chicago’s Millennium Park. That night, after two hours spent hinging on every pluck of Bird’s violin, a throng of lovely, college-age Obama voters finally stormed the stage in a wave of remarkably unscripted joy during the crescendoing chorus of “Fake Palindromes.” It was kind of exciting stuff.

Noble Beast is Bird’s eighth album, and though he previewed many of its songs at the aforementioned concert, the studio versions sound more like the morning after the gig than the gig itself. That’s not a bad thing; mind you, just another change of pace for an artist who doesn’t know the meaning of repetition.

Unlike the sometimes raucous Mysterious Production of Eggs (2005) or highly dramatic Armchair Apocrypha (2007), Noble Beast is a far more hush affair, fitting for its cover art (the sun rising over a lovely field). Opening track “Oh No” has the vibe of Rufus Wainwright interpreting an old Paul Simon song—with the addition of some pitch-perfect whistling, of course. The styles shift from that point on, but the mood holds. Like Armchair, Noble Beast doesn’t wow one out of the gate, but its subtleties are so numerous and intriguing that future listens pretty much guarantee surprises. Bird, for all his charm as a detached vocalist and oddball lyricist, is still a violinist above all else, and he’s a master of putting that instrument in varying but always cozy environs. Sometimes it’s a wee bit Brazilian (“Masterswarm”), or a tich French (“Not a Ghost, But a Robot”), or kind of Old West (“The Privateers”), but the songs tend to feel more familiar than they sound. This could be Bird’s best record, and that sunrise on the cover might actually be a sunset. Not even time will tell.

(Andrew Clayman)

Published in The Metro Pulse, January 2009