Andrew Bird
Noble Beast

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OVERVIEW: Andrew Bird is one busy man. A multi-tasking, multi-talented and multi-instrumental genius, he seems constantly on the move. Since the release of his highly acclaimed 2007 album Armchair Apocrypha, Bird has been all over the place. Quite literally, as well as musically.

Armchair Apocrypha sold over 100,000 copies in North America alone, his most successful to date. It hit all sorts of top albums of 2007 lists, including NPR Top 10 of that year, number 22 on Pitchfork’s Readers Poll, Mojo’s Number 15. Also, in the UK he went from strength to strength, selling out Bush Hall, Scala & Koko in quick succession. He’s appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O’Brien as well as playing an epic free show to a crowd of 15,000 in his home town of Chicago.

It’s a wonder Bird has been able to record a new album at all, let alone one as delicate, sonically ambitious and fecund (fourteen impeccable tunes in total) as Noble Beast. Recorded variously in Nashville with Mark Nevers (Lambchop et al) and at the Wilco Loft in Chicago, kindly loaned out by Jeff Tweedy after the Bird toured with Wilco in 2007.

As a whole, Noble Beast is perhaps a return to Bird’s less flamboyant style. More in tune with earlier recordings such as Weather Systems, it is a musical spread. But even with such differences between tracks, the warm, inviting sound of Andrew Bird is still unmistakable and always with an innately addictive, sing-a-long nature and highly individual vocal phrasing.

With not enough space on this paper to do every beautiful intricacy of the album justice, suffice to say Noble Beast is another triumph and should be listened to with the considered time and care it demands.

Disc 1

1 Oh No
2 Masterswarm
3 Fitz and the Dizzy Spells
4 Effigy
5 Tenuousness
6 Nomenclature
7 ouo
8 Not a Robot, But a Ghost
9 Unfolding Fans
10 Anonanimal
11 Natural Disaster
12 The Privateers
13 Souverian
14 On Ho!