Andrew Bird

Among the numerous new artists I find every week or so, there is sometimes the occasional performer that I will keep coming back to. The ones I'll still be listening to in a year. Over the past few weeks, I've learned to love Andrew Bird. I mentioned him in passing twice before; the first time being a link to a zeusaphone playing "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left" (video, sadly, now removed), and the second time being a brief intro to my post on sand art. Well, now I've heard more than one song by the guy. In fact, I've heard almost all of his albums. And you can too.

His 1996 album Music Of Hair is a good deal different from the rest of his oeuvre. In it, he truly shines as a violinist (which is his whole thing). It's a slightly funky mix of bluegrassy, almost-Irish sounding melodies, which is a little off-putting. However, if you're going to put in the effort, I would recommend the tracks "Ambivalence Waltz", "Oh So Insistent", and "Ratitat/Peter's Wolf/Oblivious Reel". Especially "Oh So Insistent". It's divided into an A section and a B section, where the A section reminds me of Firefly and the B section is just awesome. You may also notice that none of the recommended tracks have vocals. That's because his 1996 vocals are weird and creepy.

Next up, his 2003 album Weather Systems. I only link to it out of some sense of continuity, because I honestly don't really like any of the tracks. If I must choose a few, let them be the songs "I" and "Skin", if only to serve as some form of groundwork for his later, better stuff (you'll see).

His next album, 2005's The Mysterious Production Of Eggs is my favorite of his albums.This is because it contains the tracks "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left", "Fake Palindromes", "Measuring Cups", "Opposite Day", "Skin Is, My" (the sequel to "Skin"), and "MX Missiles". They're all... they're just great.

Unfortunately, his most recent album, 2007's Armchair Apocrypha, really only has one good track, nowhere near the great selection on his last album. That track is "Imitosis" and it really is one of his best. It's a musical sequel to Weather System's "I" and is the only Andrew Bird song to have its own music video. So, that's pretty good.

Other than that, the only things left to talk about are his Fingerlings albums. That's all his live stuff: Fingerlings, Fingerlings 2 and Fingerlings 3. In many cases, the live stuff is better, but in many more cases, they're worse. Try "Gotholympians", "Sweetbreads", "The Water Jet Cilice", and his live redition of "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left". Fingerlings 2 is a Rapidshare link, sorry. From that, I'd really only recommend "Banking On A Myth", but you have to download it all. Enjoy.