Album of the Week: Andrew Bird- Armchair Apocrypha

The cover of Armchair Apocrypha is some kind of bird, though all you can see is its back. You can't detect any wings, any facial features, the claws, etc. It's as if you're wandering through a grandparent's attic, seeing all kinds of strange and seemingly foreign things from years past via only one angle--you do a doubletake and either look closer or turn the object over before you realize what it is. This is more or less what listening to the album is like. The songs seem familiar to you but you aren't quite sure what they are until you give them closer inspection.

Andrew Bird is one of those American musicians who you're almost sure can't be an American because he seems so multicultural. The phrase "citizen of the world" comes to mind because his songs seem shot through with imagery and words from across the world. There's something of a worldly 19th century European aristocrat vibe going on, too, from his violin/stringed instrument mastery to his highly skilled whistling to his voice pitched somewhere between the operatic ecstasy of Rufus Wainwright and the sensitive-but-full-bodied Jeff Buckley. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but combined with his lyrics--filled with words, places, and people you'd only expect to hear in various history or sociology courses in college--Bird really seems like a truly intelligent person who knows a lot about everything. A Renaissance man, basically.

The true accomplishment of Armchair Apocrypha is not its intelligence, though. Like other brainy indie rockers such as the Decemberists, you don't need a Bachelor's degree to appreciate the album. That's because with songs like 'Imitosis', 'Plasticities', and 'Scythian Empires' Bird has proven himself a genius of pop songwriting. Though these three songs are too long and nuanced to work as radio smash hits, they are as catchy as catchy can be. Like Sufjan Stevens, Bird is able to write infectious and memorable songs utilizing a vast array of instruments. Also similarly, those songs can be about unconventional subjects. Where Stevens has released two albums that are ostensibly "about" the states Michigan and Illinois, Bird's songs can be about, well, the Scythian Empire and heretics; however, it's also true that Stevens and Bird's songs are not just about these topics. They're often used as metaphors or red herrings for the true meaning, which is usually left up to the listener to decide.

I feel like I should have more to say, but other than "the lyrics are really good, too" nothing comes to mind. Perhaps that's the point. This is one of those albums that people simply have to experience themselves, have a reaction to emotionally/intellectually, and return to often for ever-richer enjoyment. I can't fully explain to you what the title of the album means to me, or what I feel when the intro to 'Plasticities' starts and Bird materializes with the line "this isn't your song/this isn't your music." But you wouldn't, and shouldn't, understand even if I tried to. So. Get this album.