[UPDATE: Added new section for Andrew Bird lyrics.]

As a follow-up to the posting about "bad" music, I thought it an appropriate time to share with my few readers something which I have been intending to share for a while now; Andrew Bird. Rather, the music of Andrew Bird.

Andrew Bird has been playing violin since he was a young lad (four years old). Years ago he appeared on a few Squirrel Nut Zipper songs, most notably the song "The Ghost of Stephen Foster" (audio excerpt courtesy of Amazon.com). Although Bird enjoyed playing with the SNZ, he didn't feel he would be happy staying on as an official member; he went on to form Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire. The music they put out on their first couple of albums ("Thrills" and "Oh! The Gradeur") was pigeonholed by many as belonging to the "swing" genre.

With The Swimming Hour, and more recently Weather Systems, Bird left behind the swing genre and its ilk almost completely, instead producing an album that, as a whole, cannot be easily described (which is why I will not make any certain-to-fail attempts at doing so here). Suffice it to say that Andrew is not only an accomplished violin player, but an awesome lyricist and performer as well, spending much of the last 2 years touring alone and utilizing some simple looping devices to essentially function as a one-man band. You must see this to believe and appreciate it, and thankfully, you can see such a performance courtesy of the WoodSongs Old Time Radio Hour (this video (156MB!!!) at 23:05, 27:30 (the best place to start), 46:10, and and encore at 1:08:10 (this is my fave part of the performance, simply amazing) - I would download the entire thing before watching so you can cue up those times rather than wait through the entire streaming video (and have to watch The Crash Test Dummies)).

Simply put, I have not been this excited about music in half a decade. For music to *really* get ahold of me, the lyrics as well as the sound must be worthy of attention. Case in point are the lyrics to 11:11, a song about fate/destiny - in an interview Bird said that this song's lyrics were somewhat based on some true stories, one in particular about a young boy watching as his brother was shot in a drive-by shooting while drinking a glass of milk near a window, another about a woman killed by a piece of a window pane being carried by the wind:

Standing on the corner
Plastic cup in her hand
Standing on the corner
Saving for some gin
You don't need to ask where she's been or what's up
She'll gladly tell you all about the life she had
Before she had the cup

Standing by the window
Glass of milk in his hand
What could I have done what could I have said
Broken glass spilled milk lying on the floor looking dead

Window pain
Cutting through the rain looks so easy
Frame by frame
Looking for a name to claim on a breezy afternoon
And the ends coming soon

So many people hold a cup
So many die drinking milk in front of a window
I once knew a woman who got in the way
Of the intentions of a windy day
Don't hold a cup in any season
Don't make me choose between rhyme or reason
Don't drink that milk in front of that window
You might as well blame it on the will that the wind chose

You really should listen to the song and follow along in the lyrics to get the full effect. I think this song is one of my faves, mainly for the lyrics and the way the music is arranged. Two other favorites from The Swimming Hour are Case in Point and Way Out West. Both are worth your time. From the newer album, Weather Systems, Lull is probably my favorite, Nora O'Connor's voice rounding out Andrew's. That song has the sweetest sound - it is like audio Valium . . . so relaxing.

Andrew's next album is due out in February of 2005. You can get other albums and more information at his official website.

DISCLAIMER: This is in no way meant to serve as an exhaustive reference essay or history of Andrew Bird, so please don't construe it as such; and I make no promise that everything here is accurate, though I *am* rather anal about getting details as correct as I can.