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Noble Beast

by

Andrew Bird

 
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Avg: 4.0 (1716 ratings)

Bird perfects his fluttery, odd folk-pop formula

  • We Say...

    Review by Amanda Petrusich

    Noble Beast, Andrew Bird's eighth studio LP, is not an entirely unfamiliar jaunt: it boasts rich, textured (and, in this case, mostly acoustic) arrangements, whistling, strings, loops of sound, rhythms by the percussionist Martin Dosh and precisely metered lyrics that sound as if they were plucked from a botany textbook. Recorded in Nashville with the producer Mark Nevers (who first partnered with Bird for 2003's Weather Systems), Noble Beast is Bird perfecting a formula — fluttery, odd folk-pop that soars and twitches like a bumblebee intent on fresh pollen.

    Still, even though Bird's melodies are easy and warm, there's an underlying tension to Noble Beast's finest tracks ("Oh no," "Effigy") that keeps the record from feeling too facile. Bird's taut, almost persnickety arrangements rely on delicacy and cohesion, each bit slotted into the next like a mansion crafted from Lincoln logs (Bird, never short on self-awareness, even dubbed one track "Tenuousness"). On "Anoanimal," violin (both plucked and played) swirls around Bird's muddled vocals, which feel almost pre-linguistic — as always, Bird is more concerned with the sound of his language than its meaning, and Noble Beast is, above all, a sound collage of impressive proportions. And, as with any good puzzle, the satisfaction is in watching it all snap together into one perfect picture.

  • They Say...

    Review by James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide

    Released in 2007, Armchair Apocrypha proved that hyper-literate singer/songwriter, genre-bending violin player, and peerless whistler Andrew Bird had found the perfect middle ground between his increasingly austere solo sets and the full-band grandeur of his days with the Bowl of Fire, a strategy he repeats with similar results on Noble Beast, his fifth full-length solo offering and second collection for the Mississippi-based Fat Possum label. Bird, a classically trained violinist since the age of four, has skillfully integrated nearly everything with strings on it into his repertoire since his conversion from the Weill and Brecht-heavy days of Music of Hair, Thrills, and Oh! The Grandeur to the semi-mainstream indie pop of The Swimming Hour, but it's his seemingly limitless capacity for manipulation of the violin that dominates Noble Beast. Opening cut "Oh No," a track that Bird began releasing sketches of months before the album's street date, may be his most successful foray into the murky world of the potentially commercial pop song yet, boasting a chorus that points directly at the Shins while maintaining the artistic integrity of the loop-happy, meticulous craftsman who fans have been watching evolve since 2003's Weather Systems. What follows is a typically eclectic batch of material that reflect Bird's own musical time line. Tracks like "Masterswarm" and "Not a Robot, But a Ghost" are proof positive that he hasn't completely abandoned his swing jazz roots, "Fitz and the Dizzyspells" could very well provide audiences with their first opportunity to "bust a move" at a show, while "Nomenclature"'s easy country-folk front half dissolves into a rear end that wouldn't seem out of place on a late-'90s Radiohead album. Throughout it all Bird rhymes -- sometimes to a fault -- like a history or biology professor ("From proto-Sanskrit Minoans to porto-centric Lisboans"), rendering many of the songs clever as opposed to emotionally resonant, but whatever romance he lacks in the textual medium he more than makes up for in melody. [The deluxe version of the album includes an impressive bonus disc of instrumental works, cleverly titled Useless Creatures, which features collaborations with Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and jazz bassist Todd Sickafoose.]

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