Armchair Apocrypha
Andrew Bird
Score:85
Reviewer: Steve Scully
Label: Fat Possum (USA), Spunk (Australia), Fargo (UK)
Reviewed: Mar 12th '07, Released:2007
You cannot approach an Andrew Bird album, particularly Armchair Apocrypha, expecting any one thing in particular. If you’re after a simple pop album, the record is song based and has some outstanding hooks. Similarly, if you want left-field and virtuosic musicianship, Bird’s music is always quirky and individual. What Armchair Apocrypha offers us more than other Bird works is a collection of unashamedly indie-rock tunes. However, these are garnished superbly with fingerpicking, synth, strings and Bird’s trademark whistling to ensure it is still unique enough to fit easily with his back catalogue.
To opener ‘Fiery Crash’, as with most of the record, there’s an apparent simplicity that is only subverted by further listens. Although this is a tight, well produced song, there’s spaciousness about the way Bird goes about his arrangement, as strings flow to give weight, and vocal tracks weave their way around guitar licks and whistle solos. This song is understated, yet vast, and like much of Bird’s work, and this album in particular, it is music that grows on the listener.
So much of Armchair Apocrypha, like ’Fiery Crash’, has to be slowly digested. Whether it’s the inescapable rhythm that drives ‘Imitosis’, the beautiful strings that open ‘Plasticities’ or the lush violins and harmonies in the chorus of ‘Heretics’, each track continues to offer little snippets of brilliance, revealed gradually through well-written and eventually catchy tunes.
While there are singer/songwriters out there producing pretty, yet often tedious records – Damien Rice’s 9 springs to mind – Andrew Bird has gone largely unnoticed. The fact that many have never heard of his intelligent, innovative songwriting is a crime of the highest order and hopefully something this album helps to rectify.
