At first blush, this record is not nearly as captivating as Andrew Bird's previous three albums, but in his inimitable and subtle way, the Chicago singer-songwriter has here made yet another intricately detailed collection of songs. While Weather Systems and The Mysterious Production of Eggs found him discovering and exploring new territory, this is the album where he's built his house and now settles in and gets comfortable.
In a subgenre stuffed full with mediocrity, Bird has developed a singular style that frees him to add or subtract anything he likes from it-- no matter what he does at this point, chances are you're never going to mistake his music for anyone else's. On Bird's latest album, Armchair Apocrypha, guitar is far more prominent than it once was-- something Bird has been working toward in concert for a couple of years now. This addition deepens the texture created by his core instruments-- pedal-controlled loops of pizzicato violin, drums, and glockenspiel. With the addition of overdubs-- waves of multi-tracked violin, eerie whistling, and dizzying violin cadenzas-- and heavy layering, it all becomes nearly symphonic in scope.
The only thing that tosses and turns more than the music is Bird-- his lyrics are drawn from the kinds of thoughts that keep one up at night: "Do you wonder where the self resides/ Is it in your head or between your sides?/ Who will be the one who decides/ Its true location?" he sings on "Darkmatter", pondering the unknowable without resorting to pedestrian uses of the words "soul" and "God." His wordplay is in top form and serves as a perfect foil for the tension and release of arrangements like that on "Armchairs", where a piano pushes around chunks of listless violin.
Oddly, Bird revisits a song from 2003's Weather Systems, his first album without former band the Bowl of Fire: "Imitosis" is built around a much faster version of the violin parts and vocal hook of Weather Systems' "I", but apart from those ingredients it's completely different-- and much better. The song takes a spiraling dive into Bird's interest in science and psychology and his distrust of the ways in which we use them in our world, spinning into an examination of the nature vs. nurture debate.
These trips through a conflicted superego may not work quite as well without Bird's sonic stamp, or his voice. His singing can leap from a low deadpan to a flying falsetto in a heartbeat, and he varies his verses and choruses to throw you slightly off balance before serving his precisely delivered hooks. Bird never takes a melody where you expect it to go, as on the chorus of "Plasticities", which is practically power pop with its snappy guitar hook and massive vocal melody, but the way it's recorded and arranged it gets under your skin more than it gets into your head.
"Scythian Empires" is one of the most subtle and elegant songs about the futility of battle and conquest written during the current Iraq War, linking brief mentions of Halliburton attaché cases and talk of "exiting empires" to an ancient, extinct civilization. The Scythians controlled vast swaths of modern-day Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan for around eight centuries but now are all but forgotten-- Bird's indirect connection of them to the imagery of the last four years shows the sweep of history that speedily ushers most of our endeavors to the dustbin, and he does it without beating us over the head.
If there's a disappointing moment on the record, it's when "Heretics" pulls back from the drama of its swirling intro and slips into a mixture of spoken and sung lines instead of just going hell-for-leather to a big chorus. Otherwise, the biggest criticism you could level at it is that it's not better than the three albums that came before it-- but that scarcely matters when you're actually listening to it, because Armchair Apocrypha is ultimately another object of strange and unique beauty from this inventive songwriter and performer.
