Andrew Bird and the Triumphant Trio

Anonanimal

Noble Beast, 2009.

My favorite music argument in college was bands with three straight great albums. Let me save you some time by saying it's not a very long list. Recent entrants to my mind include Radiohead (duh), Death Cab (maybe?-- Photo Album, Transatlanticism, Plans, Narrow Stairs are all pretty awesome), Cat Power... anyway, I am as sure about Andrew Bird as I am about Radiohead. Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs, Armchair Apocrypha, and Noble Beast are all drop-dead records.

As I said in my review of Noble Beast when it came out, it's weird hearing some other influences creep into Bird's records, because no one else sounds like him. At all, really. He's something unto himself, and that shit doesn't happen at all these days.

He has an enviable vocabulary, and writes lyrics that couldn't work for anyone else, like the opening lines of "Effigy," "If you come to find me affable/ Build an replica for me/ Would the idea to you be laughable/ Of a pale facsimile/ If you come to burn an effigy/ It should keep the flies away."

How he smooshes all these sounds together and mixes them with weird lyrics is beyond me. It just works.

"Anonanimal" has just been making the rounds in my head lately, and so I present it here. As is often the case with Bird, he's in no hurry to get to the meat of the song. The opening lasts a good couple of minutes, but they don't feel boring, with the plucking of strings, the electric guitar jumping in, and then some gentle strings. Bird himself begins muttering some things that I don't understand, about viciousness and transformations.

But when the song begins in earnest, with handclaps and stomps and Bird imploring, "Hold on just a second/ hold on just a second/ I know this one/ I know this song," and then explodes into a more regulated guitar line, drums, and, uh, more handclaps, the world feels like it opens wide, a panoramic view.

Bird's facility with tunes and melodies gives him the power to often use two or three in one song, and his songs often feel more like movements because of it. I often hear the opening of a song and can't remember which one it is right away because it so thoroughly becomes something else as it goes on. He's one of the best artists of the decade for certain, one of the most consistent, and one of the most adventurous.