Andrew Bird’s
Armchair Apocrypha and
Noble Beast could be considered two spin-offs stemming from his most critically praised work,
The Mysterious Production of Eggs. The former took after
Eggs’ more bombastic numbers, like “Fake Palindromes,” and the latter after the more lilting and folk-based songs, like “Masterfade.” Paired with
Useless Creatures, the instrumental companion album to
Noble Beast, and the recent soundtrack work for the indie film
Norman, it comes as no surprise that
Break It Yourself, Andrew Bird’s tenth album under his own name, has embraced the sprawl. NPR’s Stephen Thompson posed it aptly when introducing Bird’s latest: “listen closely to lustrous, uncommonly delicate ballads like ‘Sifters’ and the eight-minute ‘Hole in the Ocean Floor,’ and the washed-out colors start to shine.” I wouldn’t say any of these ballads are “uncommonly delicate”--Andrew Bird has had his share of beautifully tender slow burners--but the idea of subtlety abounds in these fourteen tracks. That subtlety has always fuelled detractors who desire more of the extroverted pop, like “Darkmatter” or “Fake Palindromes,” but the most dominant displays of Bird’s talent has always been in the way he unfurls the layers of his songs with his talented violin, whistling, and word-play. These are all elements that
Break It Yourself maintains.
But everything is slightly more subdued this time around. The fancy wordplay, that reached dizzying, and at times annoying, new syllabic and onomatopoeic heights on
Noble Beast, has been pared back slightly on
Break It Yourself, opting for more concise and unusually incisive lyrics; on “Danse Carribe,” for example, Bird croons “we’re mistaking clouds for mountains now,” aiming at lament for the failure of perception, whether in childhood or in later years. Swinging syllables and phonetic dancing is mostly traded for these deeper insights, but Bird’s signature lyrical style still maintains some of its more capricious elements, especially on “Lusitania.” It’s all familiar, but just a touch different, a touch softer and sadder. In many ways this is Andrew Bird matured. Not that he was immature before now, but experience has honed a meticulous and careful sound structure. This may be Bird’s most complete record. The oak cask has set; the textures are fuller and the colours a little deeper. Because Andrew Bird has never been one to change dramatically from album to album, he is a tinkerer taking slightly different approaches with each new venture, like between
Armchair Apocrypha and
Noble Beast, while never eschewing from what makes him a singular artist. Of course, this has led to criticisms of predictability, which I have always found problematic.
It’s a criticism that seems symptomatic of the internet age and its persistent fetishization of trends and fads. Bird’s music is usually much too subtle to gain the sort of hype that one hit indie-poppers sometimes receive (though “Fake Palindromes” tangoed with it). Not that he doesn’t fit the pop bill; first single “Eyeoneye” has a steady drum beat and a wonderful bit of wordplay in the ecstatic coda, but even in this, his most extroverted track, most of the song’s strengths bubble below the surface, taking time to reveal themselves. It’s a catchy song, but in an obtuse fashion. The eight-minute “Hole in the Ocean Floor” is the logical extreme of
Break It Yourself’s aesthetic, fully embracing the atmospheric sprawl of Bird’s looping and lilting strings that counterpoint, build upon, and alter the initial low-key but gorgeous main theme that calls to mind Sigur Ros’ “Olsen Olsen.” If anything, he seems to be moving further away from “pure” pop song-craft (and I’m aware of the problems in this statement), embracing his classical and folk background on a more total basis. “Danse Carribe,” maybe one of Bird’s finest song-writing moments, takes a heartbreaking melody and slowly molds it into an extended middle section featuring polyrhythmic pizzicato and a mesmerizing bit of fiddle playing, countering the drifting melancholy that dominates the song’s opening and closing sections.
And that seems to be exactly what
Break It Yourself wants to be, moments of lighthearted uplift amidst the melancholy. Not heavy-handed or weighty melancholy in a Virginia Woolf kind of way, more in the way of sun-bleached old photographs of past loves: a postcard to the mellifluous nostalgia of summer love past. The image is informed much by the lyrical themes that dominate the album;
Break It Yourself is a veiled and twisting record, traversing a memory that is love-stricken and love-sick--a break up album breaking up within itself. So Bird’s lilting strings and gentle guitar play mix even better with his cheery and ethereal whistling here. Though it’s a lengthy record, at just over an hour, it’s a rewarding one. The colours are complex, the song-writing is informed by an artist who has been doing this for a long time, and the temporality of life seems to curl the edges of these pieces in a splendor of sadness. But this is not dejection, merely a nostalgic sadness, a sadness of loss and remembrance. And as the remarkable “Sifters,” perhaps Andrew Bird’s most fully realized ballad, comes to a close, he makes all of these sentiments incredibly clear: “What if we hadn’t been each other at the same time? Would you tell me all the stories from when you were young and in your prime? Would I rock you to sleep? Would you tell me all the secrets you don’t need to keep? Would I still miss you? Oh, would you then have been mine?”
