Andrew Bird [live]

The Metro, Chicago, IL: 15 April 2005

May 21, 2005, 04:48 AM

Views: 794   Comments: 0

As homecomings go, it's hard to imagine one more triumphant than Andrew Bird's most recent show in front of a packed house at Chicago's Metro. From a vantage on the balcony, Bird and drummer Kevin O'Donnell, each perched with his setup at the front of the stage, made a dashing pair, a whirl of motion and energy from the moment they took their places. Bird stood in a half-circle of gear and instruments, a glockenspiel under his vocal mic, pedals and looping devices at his feet, his violin always within reach and a guitar slung wildly on his back. He grinned and swatted at his mop of hair and engaged with the crowd in a nervous/confident way, removing his shoes with great flair as he allowed the pizzicato loops of opening number "Sovay" to percolate. The room swayed.

By now, Bird's live performance technique of laying down a bed of violin one layer at a time into a looping pattern and recreating songs from his records with drastically different arrangements is fairly well-known, but what's amazing is how incredibly exciting this makes his sets. The songs are easy to recognize, but don't come hoping to sing along, because you never know how he's going to syncopate the vocal or orchestrate a lull where once there was a rise. Bird practices telepathy with O'Donnell-- the two of them read each other like large-print books, the drummer following every twist of Bird's mind with painterly instinct, and the duo rampaged together through a set list of songs drawn mostly from Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs and Weather Systems.

They reinvented "Lull" with Bird's violin loop hinting slyly at the album version's lilting pizzicato gait as he stretched and squeezed the melody into new shapes and contours, building an ambient wash of arco scraping and laying the song down gently within it. He introduced "A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left" by performing the titular spasm, and they took the song at a charged tempo, with Bird's otherworldly whistle mixing with his glockenspiel in strange harmony. How many people can you honestly say are impressive whistlers? Bird made air passing through pursed lips into a distinct instrument, exhaling a tone that somewhere between a Theremin and a wet finger on a wineglass and he used it to stunning effect.

For a guy with so many talents, Bird balanced them nicely throughout the evening, reeling and contorting as he laid down the evil, pitch-shifted violin lines of "I", soloing on both violin and guitar and pushing his voice hard as it wrapped around phrases like "I was the cartographer of the tangles in your hair" with the grace of a Buckley (father or son, take your pick). That line came from a new song announced as "Armchairs of the Apocalypse" that dashed any concerns that he may have a hard time finding new ground after his last two records effectively invented a new sound.

In an age when encores are just about compulsory, this audience cheered so thunderously for one that they seemed genuinely concerned he wouldn't come back out. No one headed for the door. He rewarded them with a jaw-dropping version of "Why?" from 2001's The Swimming Hour, just his voice and his violin and a rapt, reverent crowd. As we wobbled out of the venue under the glare of the house lights with smoke in our hair and a slight but not severe ringing in our ears, all my wife could say was "what a huge talent." I looked at my notes and next to "Skin Is, My," the only comment I had scrawled was "wow!" The same dumbfounded comment was chicken-scratched next to three other song titles. Fitting, as there's no better word to describe Andrew Bird live.

Story by Joe Tangari

#1 | Subscribe | Send to Friend | Print | Discipline | Report