It's an unjust world that doesn't hail Andrew Bird with parades and midnight fetes.
Nine years ago or so, when the Chicago-based violinist and songwriter formed Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire, I nearly wrote him off right then and there. At the time, Bird, a Suzuki-trained musician who claimed to have barely heard any rock music at all, ever, was a hot-jazz violinist somewhat in the mold of the great French player Stéphane Grappelli and a sometime member of swing revivalists The Squirrel Nut Zippers. Given that the neo-swing revival lasted all of two years, and my patience with it considerably less time, I was disinclined to give Andrew Bird a free pass.
With The Bowl of Fire, Bird put out Thrills (Rykodisc, 1998) and Oh! The Grandeur (Rykodisc, 1999), two albums which I received as basically updated museum pieces, kind of neato like a garage-built replica of a Model T Ford, but like a Model T replica more curiosities than accomplishments. His archly retro songs and arrangements were entertaining amalgams of ragtime, hot jazz and swing, Weimar-era cabaret, Eastern European folk music, and other similarly unfashionable influences, but their appeal (for me, at least) stopped at the eardrums. The albums seemed to sell passably well, he built a small and dedicated fanbase, but for my part I had my fill of Andrew Bird pretty quickly. (Full disclosure: I was working for the label that put out Bird's first three albums. As if that makes me any more patient with nonsense.)
And then it all got weird. Bird's third album went in what you might call a completely unexpected direction. I suspected it might be getting interesting when, one afternoon, I was instructed to find a Hohner Beatle bass on short notice for Andrew to make use of in the studio (luckily for me, Manhattan is sick with Beatle basses for rent), and my suspicions were borne out when he delivered his third Bowl of Fire album, The Swimming Hour (Rykodisc, 2001). Gone were the hot jazz, the Hungarian folk music and the two-step beats. Gone were the one always-arched eyebrow and the sense that every note was part of some elaborate in-joke.
Article comments
1 - Mara Siegler
Thank you so much for writing this. I have been breathing this album for weeks and just can't get over how brilliant it is. Like you with your 30 boxes, I actually got drunk one night and forced it onto the bartender as thanks.