Andrew Bird is now on tour and will be playing a concert at the Michigan Theater on April 7 at 7:30 p.m, presented by The Ark.
When I was in high school and Borders Bookstore was still a mainstay of East Liberty St. in downtown Ann Arbor, I skipped a lot of school to read and to see free concerts at Borders. I saw Feist, Tegan and Sara, Paulo Nutini, and eventually, Andrew Bird. (Think Sonic Lunch, but indoors).
I definitely thought that Andrew Bird was dreamy, and his music left an impression on
me. I remember that Bird performed with his shoes off, and that he made use of his looping pedal, violin, guitar, and steady whistling.
This was around 2009, and Andrew Bird was touring to promote his album Noble Beast. What I liked about that album was that it was incredibly ethereal, but with down to earth, beautiful, sweet melodies and complicated, interesting lyrics.
For example, in his song “Tenuousness,” Bird sings, “Tenuous at best was all he had to say/ When pressed about the rest of it, the world that is/ From proto-Sanskrit Minoans to Porto-centric Lisboans/ Greek Cypriots and and harbor-sorts who hang around in ports a lot.”
Bird is an interesting one because he can do it all. His music toes the line between genres. In Bird’s first album, “Music of Hair”, you can hear the influence of traditional American and Irish folk music. In later albums Bird incorporates swing and pre-war jazz, as well as blues, into tracks.
Bird’s latest album, “Inside Problems,” which he wrote mostly during the night to cure insomnia, seems to be a mix of all his previous works.
There are moments of folk and jazz, exquisite whistling, mixed in drum beats, and violin themes ushering us in and out. And of course, we have lyrics that are there to make us question, to keep us up in the night.
To see and hear it for yourself, purchase tickets to this weekend’s show. Tickets are going fast for his Michigan Theater show on the 7th! Make sure to get yours before they are gone. You can learn more about Bird’s tour on his website.
