Andrew Bird 'Noble Beast' album

In a profile of Andrew Bird coinciding with last month’s release of Noble Beast, VANITY FAIR remarked that his sold out Carnegie Hall show would likely be the “last chance to catch this Bird up close.”

VF has already been proven correct: Having sold nearly every ticket on his current spring tour, Bird has announced the first of a series of summer dates in the U.S. in which popular demand will see him stepping up to headline the likes of Radio City Music Hall, the Tower Theater in Philadelphia, Boston’s Bank of America Pavilion and Atlanta’s Cobb Energy Center. General on sale is March 7 for Atlanta, Philadelphia and Boston, and March 6 for New York. See below for the full list of dates.

Confirmed dates prior to the headline engagements include a one-off with the Decemberists June 8 at Washington DC’s Merriweather Post Pavilion and an appearance at this year’s Bonnaroo festival. General on sale for the DC show is March 6. Bird’s current U.S. tour concludes April 11 at Minneapolis’ State Theater, preceded by a two-night stand at Chicago’s Civic Opera House April 9 and 10.

Further dates will be announced as they are confirmed.

Released January 20 on Fat Possum Records, Noble Beast debuted at #12 on the U.S. album chart, selling over 25,000 units in its opening week. The debut was the highest of the week for an independent label release and second overall. Noble Beast was also that week’s highest selling record in Bird’s hometown of Chicago.

Andrew Bird tour dates

06/08/09- Washington DC - Merriweather Post Pavilion * Supporting Decemberists

06/11-14/09 - TBD - Manchester TN - Bonnaroo

06/15/09 - Atlanta, GA - Cobb Energy Center

06/17/09 - Philadephia, PA - Tower Theatre

06/18/09 - New York, NY - Radio City Music Hall

06/19/09 - Boston, MA - Bank of America Pavilion

press quotes
“Mesmerizing…The records are great, but watching him do it live is something every music fan ought to check out.”–SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

“We’ve been to a lot of concerts in our lifetime and there have been some pretty epic shows for sure, but it’s not often that we’re completely blown away by a single performer. Well, Andrew Bird’s performance Monday night at the Moore Theatre left us completely in awe. It’s that simple really. We literally found our mouths hanging open after nearly every song.”–SEATTLEST

“At one point he had his guitar slung behind his back, his violin and bow in one hand and a glockenspiel mallet in the other as he whistled into a microphone. He has a sweet, warbling, perfectly in-tune whistle - like a Walt Disney bluebird - that he floats through the rest of his musical constructions, sometimes in unison with the glockenspiel for an otherworldly effect.”–NEW YORK TIMES

Andrew Bird Noble Beast album
Over 100,000 sales of 2007’s Armchair Apocrypha, hundreds of shows including a Chicago homecoming for over 15,000 fans at Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion, and dozens of critical accolades and year-end best lists later... Andrew Bird’s Noble Beast will be released January 27, 2009 on Fat Possum Records.

Andrew Bird is one busy man. A multi-tasking, multi-talented and multi-instrumental genius, he seems constantly on the move. Since the release of his highly acclaimed 2007 album Armchair Apocrypha, Bird has been all over the place. Quite literally, as well as musically.

Armchair Apocrypha sold over 100,000 copies in North America alone, his most successful to date. It hit all sorts of top albums of 2007 lists, including NPR Top 10 of that year, number 22 on Pitchfork’s Readers Poll, Mojo’s Number 15. Also, in the UK he went from strength to strength, selling out Bush Hall, Scala & Koko in quick succession. He’s appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O’Brien as well as playing an epic free show to a crowd of 15,000 in his home town of Chicago. Not to mention playing a benefit show for Barack Obama which helped raise over $14,000, blogging for the New York Times and interviewing internationally renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma for MTV World.

It’s a wonder Bird has been able to record a new album at all, let alone one as delicate, sonically ambitious and fecund (fourteen impeccable tunes in total) as Noble Beast. Recorded variously in Nashville with Mark Nevers (Lambchop et al) and at the Wilco Loft in Chicago, kindly loaned out by Jeff Tweedy after the Bird toured with Wilco in 2007.

The strange and slightly deranged lyrical content remains as compelling as ever. Lead track and future single ‘Oh No’, with its trademark whistling intro, was inspired by a flight spent with a wailing child. “I was struck by the mournfulness of this kid’s wail,” says Bird. “He just kept crying ‘Oh no’ in a way that only someone who is certain of their own demise could. Pure terror.” So begins the song with the child’s half-dream about climbing out of a window and venturing out of the claustrophobic plane and why it is, that as adults we’re unable to scream and shout in such terrifying situations. And it is characteristic of Bird’s dark humour that such a song about crippling self-repression should be set to joyous music with, as Bird describes it, a ‘tight Fleetwood Mac-style’ beat. Naturally, the album is of course, book-ended with the wordless violin and clarinet lament ‘On Ho’.

As a whole, Noble Beast is perhaps a return to Bird’s less flamboyant style. More in tune with earlier recordings such as Weather Systems, it is a musical spread. But even with such differences between tracks, the warm, inviting sound of Andrew Bird is still unmistakable and always with an innately addictive, sing-a-long nature and highly individual vocal phrasing.

From simple, heartfelt paeans like ‘Effigy’ (“So when you come to burn an effigy/It should keep the flies away”) or the pleasure of Bird’s deft, light touch on lilting melodic gems like ‘Natural Disaster’ (“where the kittens have pleurisy”) to more complex and astonishing compositions we’ve come to expect such as ‘Anonanimal’ where Bird once again displays his gently mordant wit (“Hold on just a second/Don’t tell me this one you know/I know this one I know this song) – recorded at a live show in Minneapolis and variously at different recording sessions over a five month period, the marvellous poppy zeal of Tenuousness (“Tenuous at best was all he had to say when pressed about the rest of it, the world that is”) and epic adventures like the seven minute opus ‘Souverian’, Noble Beast is engaging on many levels. ‘Masterswarm’ is again a lengthy track at over six minutes, but its lyrical swing, surprising wordplay (“Oh and their young / In the larval stage / Orchestrating plays / In vestments of translucent alabaster) and Bird’s utterly glorious singing violin, and that ever-present eerie whistling is just a joy.

The anthemic surge of ‘The Privateers’ was recorded with Andreas Werliin (of Wildbirds & Peacedrums) on drums and Emil Svanängen (aka Loney, Dear) on background vocals and flute. ‘Not a Robot, But a Ghost’ has an edgy, insect fever and discordant clanging with the kind of slightly paranoid lyrics that might give Thom Yorke a run for his money; “I hear the clockwork in your core / Time strips the gears till you / Forget what they were for / I push the numbers through your pores / I crack the codes I crack the codes / To end the war”.

With not enough space on this paper to do every beautiful intricacy of the album justice, suffice to say Noble Beast is another triumph and should be listened to with the considered time and care it demands.

Andrew Bird will be back to the UK in the early 2009 for a full headline tour.

Andrew Bird biography
Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist and lyricist Andrew Bird picked up his first violin at the age of 4. Actually, it was a Cracker Jack box with a ruler taped to it, and the first of his many Suzuki music lessons involved simply bowing to the teacher and going home. He spent his formative years soaking up classical repertoire completely by ear so when it came time for a restless teen-ager to make the jump to Hungarian Gypsy music, early jazz, country blues, south Indian etc., it wasn't such a giant leap. It's fitting that now, though classically trained, he has instead opted to play his violin in a most unconventional manner, accompanying himself on glockenspiel and guitar, adding singing and whistling to the equation, and becoming a pop songwriter in the process.

Since beginning his recording career, Andrew has released nine albums: six studio albums, both solo and with his former group the Bowl of Fire, and three live albums. The soon to be released Armchair Apocrypha will bring the tally to ten. Armchair Apocrypha, to be released March 20 on Fat Possum, was recorded mainly in Minneapolis at Crazy Beast Studios (Ben Durrant) and Third Ear Studios (Tom Herbers).

A cast of collaborators was drawn from the surrounding music scene: Drummer and keyboard player Martin Dosh, singer Haley Bonar, bassist Chris Morrissey, and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Ylvisaker (who, along with Dosh, now features in Andrew's live lineup) added their talents to the album, which was mixed at the famed, haunted Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. It is an album that sums up where Andrew's career has taken him, yet is completely very much of his artistic present.

The album opens with "Fiery Crash," which Bird describes as a superstitious incantation to protect him from plane crashes ("just a nod to mortality before you get on the plane"). As the album progresses, songs of "Dark Matter" ("do you wonder where the self resides, is it in your head or between your sides, and who will be that one who will decide its true location?), "Heretics" and "Plasticities" are sung with humor and lightness the belies their lyrical depth. "Scythian Empire," amid lush pizzicato violin, considers an obscure corner of history and its lost civilizations, and apocalyptic horsemen. And so it goes through to the final notes of "Yawny at the Apocalypse," varied and stunning musical tapestries embellished with lyrical vignettes and musings that veer fluidly from almost childlike innocence to seasoned, darkly comic wit, with brilliant and unexpected twists at every turn.

Andrew's 2005 studio album, The Mysterious Production of Eggs, was a breakthrough for him both commercially and artistically, with exuberant praise from a wide variety of sources, and a dramatic increase in attendance at his unique live performances, moving up from clubs to packing the likes of Los Angeles' Henry Fonda, San Francisco's Great American Music Hall and concluding with a sold-out two-night homecoming at Chicago's Logan Square Auditorium. Similar word of mouth built to a steady simmer amongst fans from NPR, bloggers, high school students, and Parisian aficionados to an avid and expanding set of live-tape traders worldwide, as Andrew made good on the London Independent's prediction: "Bird could do for independent American music what Tarantino did for American cinema."

Since then, Mr. Bird has also impressed huge festival audiences at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, SXSW, the Montreal Jazz Festival, Radio France, and made appearances on the BBC, KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic," and NPR's "World Cafe" and “All Things Considered.” Positive reviews and Best of 2005 lists followed including Magnet, Paste, The Onion, the Boston Globe, CMJ, and popmatters, as well as a nomination for the 2006 New Pantheon award, and the following rave from Pitchfork: "I looked at my notes and next to 'Skin Is, My,' the only comment I had scrawled was 'Wow!' The same dumbfounded comment was chicken-scratched next to three other song titles. Fitting, as there's no better word to describe Andrew Bird live."

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Andrew Bird - Noble Beast