At thirty-five years old, singer-songwriter Andrew Bird has been called everything from “troubadour” to “vaguely retro vagabond” to “musical Renaissance man.” He comes by these titles honestly; the Chicago native is proficient in the violin, guitar, mandolin, glockenspiel, and whistling. By combining his extraordinary musical talents with his knack for clever lyrics and thoughtful melody, Bird has created a sound uniquely his own.
His musical career began somewhere around the tender age of eight. Upon discovering his talent at the violin, Bird pursued his education in the instrument thoroughly and was classically trained in the Suzuki method (a method that teaches music like a foreign language, employing factors like immersion, encouragement, and an unforced timetable). His love affair with the violin lasted through college, and he graduated from Northwestern University in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in violin performance.
For several years after graduation, most of Andrew Bird’s music relied heavily on his violin training and the influence of classical music. He released two similar-sounding albums – Thrills in 1997 and Oh! The Grandeur in 1998 – with his band Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire. The Bowl of Fire consisted of Chicago musicians Kevin O’Donnell, Nora O’Connor, Andy Hopkins, Jimmy Sutton, Colin Bunn and Ryan Hembrey, and was unofficially disbanded in 2003. Since then, Bird has released two solo albums – 2003’s Weather Systems and 2005’s The Mysterious Production of Eggs – through Ani DiFranco’s label, Righteous Babe Records, and one – 2007’s Armchair Apocrypha – through Fat Possum Records. His sound has become progressively more eclectic, ranging from folk to what can loosely be described as indie pop. However, his love for the violin has remained, and the instrument holds a significant presence in the majority of his music.
“The violin is just the easiest way I have to express what’s in my head,” Andrew stated in a May 2007 interview with Pitchfork. “I’ll just fully, unconsciously do whatever it takes to make that sound happen. Just like I would do with my own voice. I don’t even think of the violin as being part of any discipline.”
Bird’s musical influences are undeniably centered in the classical tradition. He cites French composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy, but gives special recognition to the prewar jazz that influenced him intensely between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four. The impact of the musical greats like Johnny Hodges, Lester Young and the Verve that focused on creating melody is noticeably present in Bird’s music as well. More recently, he has been compared lyrically to both Bob Dylan and Sufjan Stevens, artists of rather different mediums. What is the result of all of this?
“It means I’m overqualified to play most of the music I make,” he laughed in an interview with online magazine You Ain’t No Picasso. His music has an overall melodic and peaceful feel to it, even when his lyrics become more provocative or depressing.
“Usually, I’ll take some feeling I have and amplify it a little, to the point where it’s potentially funny. And then, the music that I write is often not necessarily full of doom and gloom. You’ll notice in most of the darkest songs, the music is actually pretty peaceful and lulling. I’ve always felt that dark lyrics with dark music is pretty useless. There’s no chance for us to get a perspective.”
In his lyrics, Andrew Bird combines pastoral elements with historical traditions and commentary on modern detachment. There is a trend of slight melancholy and nostalgia, as he tries to communicate the desperation caused by the rift between past and future. He allows his melodies to demonstrate his penchant for nature and simplicity and his desire to preserve the earth and the cultural human tradition as much as possible. He plays as if a part of a worldwide conversation, yet creates an atmosphere so intimate it seems that only three or four other people should be present around a bonfire of sorts. His contribution to the musical community is a thoughtful one, reflective and foreboding and positively beautiful.
I dreamed you were a cosmonaut
of the space between our chairs,
and I was a cartographer
of the tangles in your hair.
I sang the song that silence sings.
It's the one that everybody knows, everybody knows.
The song that silence sings,
and this is how it goes.
These looms that weave apocrypha,
they're hanging from a strand.
The dark and empty rooms were full
of incandescent hands.
The awkward pause,
the fatal flaw.
Time, it's a crooked bow.
Time is a crooked bow.
In time you need to learn to love
the ebb just like the flow.
Grab hold of your bootstraps, and pull like hell
until gravity feels sorry for you, and lets you go
as if you lack the proper chemicals to know
the way it felt the last time you let yourself fall this low.
Time's a crooked bow.
Time's a crooked bow.
Time, it's a crooked bow.
Fifty-five and three-eighths years later,
at the bottom of a gigantic crater,
an armchair calls to you.
Yeah, an armchair calls to you.
It says, "Someday, we'll get back at them all
with epoxy and a pair of pliers
as ancient sea slugs begin to crawl
through the ragweed and barbed wire."
You didn't write.
You didn't call.
It didn't cross your mind at all.
Through the waves,
waves of hay and straw,
you couldn't feel a thing at all.
Fifty-five and three-eighths.
Time.
Fifty-five and three-eighths.
Time.
Time.
"Armchairs" possesses the feel of a surreal, almost dreamlike state of mind as it explores the nature of time and fate. The song opens with an inference that a separation exists between the speaker and the one whom he loves. He longs for his love, but instead finds only the silence to keep him company, and mourns. The third stanza contains allusions to the ancient Greeks and to Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory." The word 'apocrypha' is derived from the Greek word meaning "those having been hidden away," and in this instance perhaps refers to the mythological weavers of fate. The "dark and empty rooms" Bird refers to could mean the empty spaces of the yet-undecided future, lined with the "incandescent hands" of a clock. The reference to time as a "crooked bow" in the following stanza brings to mind Dali's paintings with the melting clocks.
The speaker in the song loves someone who has fallen into a deep depression, and he desperately tries to encourage her to adopt a different perspective and pull herself up. The line "...the last time you let yourself fall this low" suggests that the situation has occurred previously as well. Throughout the remainder of the song, there is a constant reminder that time passes quickly, that undesirable futures may lie ahead for the speaker's loved one. The crater of depression will continue to grow deeper into the ground until the person is swallowed whole and loses feeling altogether. There is a potential for complete isolation and misery.
"Armchairs" can also be viewed in light of modern society's move away from reality and into the metaphorical armchair of self-medication and escapism. The passage of time in a technological daze can result in a chasm of separation between human beings altogether. The dreamlike feel of the melody that supports the lyrics suggests that perhaps there is still time left for all of us to change our futures - to challenge the uncertain authenticity of fate and return to a more enlightened age where truth is illuminated in the unmistakable glow of art.
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