CD Review: Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production of Eggs(8/10)
It’s a rare thing that a musician can release an album that not only sounds completely original, but also flows well as an album, which is to say, as a cohesive piece of music that does not sound like a bunch of random songs tossed onto a CD together. Chicago native Andrew Bird has done just that on his new album The Mysterious Production of Eggs (being released next Tuesday, February 8, by Ani Difranco’s Righteous Babe Records).
Andrew Bird is a marvelous combination of songwriter, violinist, guitarist, vocalist, and whistler. His music sounds like an amalgamation of various artists. A scenario if you will: let us take Rufus Wainwright, Jack Johnson, and Talking Heads’s David Byrne and toss them into a blender together and push purée. The mixture that you are left with is something that sounds like symphonic-folk that has been tinged with the sadness of a good opera.
The recording sessions for Mysterious Production were as strange as the album’s title. Bird scrapped the album three times and traveled between studios in Los Angeles, Chicago, and his home studio on a farm in Northern Illinois. David Boucher, who has worked with such artists as Paul Westerberg, Randy Newman, and Lisa Loeb, helped Bird find the final shape that Mysterious Production ultimately takes. The music that results is magnificent, and since Bird plays most of the instruments on the album, that magnificence is all the more apparent.
Mysterious Production kicks off with an untitled instrumental track that prepares us for what is to come on the album. A lush mix of violin and ambient noise, it is like the prologue of a book or film: we are transported into the musical world that Bird is creating. This track leads us into “Sovay,” an acoustic number in which Bird sings about Don Quixote in B-17’s and listening to “Ride of the Valkeries.” The title “Sovay” doesn’t mean anything in particular. Bird has said of the title: “I was working on this song, and suddenly that word popped out. I was looking for a new word to describe unprecedented circumstances, and that word had not been defined for me, so it fit the bill and it sounded good. It’s a new word.”
Other songs on the album include “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left” and “Opposite Day,” which are a bit more up-tempo than “Sovay,” but equally impressive with their verbal content. The standout track for lyrics though is “Banking on a Myth,” in which the chorus proclaims that we are “taking all our myths to the bank.” Bird’s lyrics often seem like listening to his stream of consciousness, and it’s often for the best. We are presented with rhymes that we as listeners would not expect. How often have you heard songs that aspire to rhyme “formaldehyde” in six different ways?
Bird’s live show is a perfect accompaniment to Mysterious Production (he hits the road opening for Ani DiFranco this February for a string of dates). At his shows, with the aid of a sampling pedal, Bird takes his dense, orchestrated recordings and rewrites them anew each night, adding layers of hypnotic instruments to his vocals and whistling, creating a sight that demands to be seen to be believed.
The Mysterious Production of Eggs is a perfect album for this time of year. A little dark and melancholic for the coldness of being inside in winter with hints of hope, like spring could be just around the corner. While the production may be mysterious, the final result of this album does not disappoint.
