Andrew Bird's Noble Beast

This is a review I should have written weeks ago, but better late than never, I guess. I say "should have" because anyone who looks at this blog even occasionally knows that I can't say enough about Andrew Bird. Noble Beast, released last month, is finally getting the Bird Man the attention he deserves. There's been a veritable media blitz--NPR loves him to death, I've been seeing and hearing interviews with him left and right, and I believe he's playing Leno tonight. For a guy who's songs you'll probably never hear on the radio, this might be as good as it gets.

But I digress. The only unfortunate thing about Noble Beast is that it came out so early in 2009 that I'm concerned it won't find a home on people's top 10 lists at the end of the year. I think I can safely say that won't be a problem for me. Bird is easily one of my favorite artists of the last decade, and Noble Beast places a close second behind Mysterious Production of Eggs for his best album to date. From the infectious opening whistle of "Oh No" right on through to the end, there is nary a weak spot.

Maybe I'm a sucker for whistling, or a little violin plucking, or big words, or all of these things put together, but this is definitely good stuff. The melodies that were stuck in Andrew Bird's head for years as he crafted the songs for Noble Beast will get stuck in your head. The words in his lyrics, whether you know what they mean or not, will stick in your head like a poppy seed in your teeth. From Bird's recent NPR interview (there's lots of links to streaming concerts and songs through the NPR site, too): "Bird's lyrics often feature archaic language — words such as radiolarian, plecostomus, dermestids, coprophagia — which he chooses mainly for their sound, but not at the expense of their meaning....'I guess I'm attracted to more archaic words because they can be imbued with more meaning, because their definition is elusive. And sometimes my use of words is a bit reckless. I'm aware of that.'"

Reckless or not, it works. I could probably do a post for every song on this album, but I'll stop here and just encourage anybody reading this to check out Noble Beast. If you're already an Andrew Bird fan, get the Deluxe Edition, which features a bonus instrumental album, Useless Creatures. It's a bit more experimental and weird, but still a great listen.