Andrew Bird

Allow us to introduce Dr. Stringz? He's a courteous sociopath, a craftsman of stringed instruments, a mad scientist of the violin… Ever since he played him on a children's TV show, Andrew Bird has been possessed by his spirit. He usually pops up in the motif that opens the classic “Fake Palindromes”: “I'm so pleased to meet you, I'm the one they call Dr. Stringz…”. Someone in the warm Milan spring at the Music Drome tried to summon him too, but Bird demurred with a smile: “that takes too much charisma…”. Yes, because this time Andrew Bird doesn't have the band that usually joins him onstage: he's completely alone, just as he was at the dawn of his solo career. But no need to worry — the mad genius of Dr. Stringz is now part of him: he doesn't need to be announced to pull every note into his fantastical world.

Andrew Bird's entrance onstage is preceded by a kind of ritual invocation of the muse: first he seats his lucky mascot on the two-headed gramophone that, as always, serves as the backdrop to the stage set; then he starts building a magnetic instrumental prologue with his usual layering of violin samples, guitar, glockenspiel, handclaps and — of course — whistling. Only then is he ready to kick off his boots, left in his unmistakable multicolored socks in which he takes the stage. And so the tormented melancholy of “The Water Jet Cilice” takes shape, straight from the “Soldier On” EP, which wounds with its “tales of ritual self-torture” for voice and violin. Then “Sovay” wraps the audience in light grace, the sole concession to the masterpiece “The Mysterious Production Of Eggs”.

Each song is a throbbing creation that unfolds before the audience's eyes: cradling the violin like a guitar, Bird sketches the rhythmic backbone of the songs with his pizzicato; then he picks up the bow to stretch out the melody, all while fiddling with pedals to loop the parts he records on the fly, which layer over one another with a hypnotic effect. Everything else is improvisation, flair, the inspiration of the moment, in a game where even imperfection becomes an integral part of the creative process. There's room for any kind of oddity: Bird spins his gramophone to create reverb during the songs' crescendos, conjures rhythms out of nothing but voice and microphone, even whistles directly into the violin's soundbox to draw out, with visible satisfaction, an unusual resonance… Only a prodigious one-man band like him could hold the audience's attention alone for almost two hours of music — often not exactly easy to follow.

When Bird flaunts the theatrical tones of old songs like “Why?” or “Action/Adventure”, giving himself over to Buckley-esque flights and ironic interludes, it truly feels like being catapulted back to the early days of the Chicago songwriter's concerts (like the ones documented in the self-released live series “Fingerlings”). Even “Sweetbreads” resurfaces from the past, an early version of “Darkmatter” dedicated to the paradoxes of eating animal organs (!), a delight of handclapping and airy harmonies in which Bird muses on the flickering of neurons.

That subtly haunted look of his wouldn't be out of place on the face of Anthony Perkins in “Psycho”, as he loses himself in the music, shaking his head and tousling his hair. The songwriterly shades of “Natural Disaster” and “Scythian Empire” lull gently, letting the most intimate traits of his visions — built on microorganisms and steppe horsemen — shine through. “Effigy”, he explains himself, is the flip side of alienation, the hope granted even to those who inevitably feel out of place among people: “If you come to find me affable, build a replica for me”, he whispers. But it's when the electricity of his vintage Gibson grows more urgent, as in the lively whistling of “Oh No” and “Fitz And The Dizzyspells”, that the crowd's enthusiasm becomes palpable, confirming the brilliance of his latest “Noble Beast”. Indeed, the success of the opening night of “Vitaminic Days” is proven by the fact that, to accommodate the crowd gathering around Bird, the concert had to be moved to a larger venue than the one originally planned.

Between the sinuous movements of the inevitable “Imitosis” and the interference running through the mellow “Cataracts”, the farewell is entrusted to the tightrope-walking flourishes of “Anonanimal” and “Weather Systems”, with Bird's violin weaving more elaborate flourishes than ever. But his virtuosity is never an end in itself: there's always a tireless fire driving it. And it's no coincidence that, even though the pop lightness that hovers over his albums is sometimes missing, Bird still manages to keep the audience glued to the strings of his violin even without a band behind him.

“I will become this animal / Perfectly adapted to the music halls”, Bird proclaims in “Anonanimal” before the curtain falls, describing with his usual vivid inventiveness his long, ongoing artistic metamorphosis. Not even Darwin could have theorized it: the discovery of homo birdianus is a wonderful surprise in the evolution of the species.

(21/05/2009)

Photo by Giovanna Bonora

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