Andrew Bird's Bowl OF Fire - The Swimming Hour

TRACKLISTING: Side 11. Two Way Action 2. Core and Rind 3. Why? 4. 11:11 Side 2 1. Case In Point 2. Too Long 3. Way Out West Side 3 1. Waiting to Talk 2. Fatal Flower Garden 3. Satisfied Side 4 1. Headsoak 2. How Indiscreet 3. Dear Old Greenland
 
OVERVIEW: Originally released to critical acclaim in 2001, the third and final album from Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire, The Swimming Hour, will be presented on vinyl for the first time as a Deluxe 2x Vinyl LP set (Gatefold Jacket / 45rpm / 140 Gram vinyl).  Newly remastered under the watchful eyes of Bird himself, this album was produced by Mike Napolitano (Blind Melon, the Neville Brothers, and the Squirrel Nut Zippers) and is the final album to feature Bird’s backing band, Bowl of Fire.
 
As a special addition to this vinyl package, the original CD album art has been reinterpreted by artist Jay Ryan, turning the photograph on the original cover into a pop art illustration.  Ryan is the founder of the Skokie-based screenprint poster workshop, The Bird Machine, Inc.
 
Bird describes the album as “when the everyday becomes incredulous to you.”  He relates this as a feeling he experienced in 2000 when walking through a roughed-up neighborhood in his hometown of Chicago.  Bird was thinking of the direction of his next album when “everything got really strange-feeling …everything became really slow.”  Andrew Bird had entered a state of mind he refers to as the “swimming hour.”
 
Fellow Chicago native, Nora O’Connor, appears with Bird as co-vocalist and back-up vocalist on many of the thirteen songs on The Swimming Hour.  Bird also covers the Mississippi Sheiks’ “Too Long” and Nelstone’s Hawaiians’ “Fatal Flower Garden.”

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