Then they brought to him a demoniac who was blind and mute; and he cured him, so that the one who had been mute could speak and see.
Recently, I’ve been re-discovering Andrew Bird, a musician whose work as the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ violinist (is “fiddleist” a word?) has impressed me since middle school, when I would put on Perennial Favorites & play “Ghost of Stephen Foster” in loops just for the hyper fiddle work. At some point, in high school, I found his solo work with The Bowl of Fire, working for store credit at the record store to pick up Thrills one day, & found an alternative to Squirrel Nut that followed the same basic formula – 30’s big-band/swing throwback ditties & crooning bits in between – but with this odd air of self-awareness. There was an interest in paying homage to a style & moving past it at the same time, the lyrics too skewed or too modern to fit the jazz, or the vocals recorded to poorly to sound just right. The album has grown on me each time I’ve put it on, to say the least.
By now, Andrew Bird is a much bigger act, moving on to solo work since ten years ago (when Thrills was released), work that is equally as interesting, although much more acclaimed & much, much more disquieted. His interests now are in the way rhythms sort of flow from nothing & come together in layers, soundlessly rising, rising, rising, & just before the climax, hushing. I’m just getting into his newer albums (I really disliked The Mysterious Production of Eggs at first, but have found myself wishing I had it here at school with me recently…), but more importantly have found his first solo album (from 1996), Music of Hair, & am in love with it.
The concept behind it is using the violin to create fiddle dirges in several different styles, meaning most of the album is instrumental: just a man & his violin (the instrument he’s best at, by far). Amazon.com doesn’t carry this album, I’m not how to go about buying it on CD, so for now a download is about as close as I can get.
ANYWAY, talk about taking the long long long way to a point: let’s listen to another set of songs. Here is Bird’s “Glass Figurine” from Thrills, & a live performance taken from 2007 or 08; it might as well be a new song altogether. What was once a swing number with a full-jazz-band sound has been replaced by one man & a loop machine. Very spooky.
So enjoy: