Plasticities – Andrew Bird
For me, Andrew Bird will always be something of a disappointment, not through any fault of his own but simply because I heard his magnificent “Fake Palindromes” first, and everything else after. And while his other songs are nice enough, they simply fall so far behind that one single achievement that I find it hard to be affected.
His followup album Armchair Apocrypha received many plaudits on its release earlier this year, most of which I agree with in principle if not in degree. It is certainly a very good album, finely crafted and richly textured, but I can’t say it’s really one of my favorites. I’ll put on my prediction hat for a second and guess that for all the fine press it received early in the year, a surprisingly small amount of people will actually find room for it on their year-end lists. It strikes me as precisely the sort of album that a dedicated few will listen to with ever-growing love, while the larger percentage will look back come December and think “hmmm, haven’t listened to that one in three months, have I?”
Perhaps I’m playing too much of the musical pyschologist here. After all, the man certainly can write some great lyrics, there is no doubt, and there certainly is something fascinating about music written for the violin – it creates depth that would simply be unimaginable for a traditional guitar-and-drums outfit. And as I noted back at the end of 2006, my tastes don’t really seem to run in tandem with the blog-consensus, so who am I to be making predictions or impugning a deep and complex record?
Nobody, that’s who. Which means there is a decent chance I’m selling it short. But I guess the long and short of it is that I keep expecting it to give me goosebumps and they never quite come. Make of that what you will.
All that said, “Plasticities” is a great song, and I absolutely love the whistling at the end of “Dark Matter.”