The latest lush album from Andrew Bird angles for acutely self-aware songwriting and succeeds in never being obtuse.
Andrew Bird/ Are You Serious
Classically trained violinist/singer-songwriter and all-round versatile artist Andrew Bird has been crafting tuneful ditties by adeptly fusing elements of folk and baroque pop since 2005. Throughout his discography, Bird has established himself as a compositional wizard whose penchant for loquaciousness reflected through some of the best songs on The Mysterious Production of Eggs, Break It Yourself and Hands of Glory. His latest offering, 13th studio LP Are You Serious, welcomes a sea change in style that's far less extravagant and more matter-of-fact. Centred around love, the record is a product of Bird's recent role as a husband and father.
The album opens with a slice of suave funk built on a grooving bass line and fuzzy guitar riffs in the form of first single Capsized. The drum and string flourishes hearken back to the days of '60s soul as he compares a pivotal period of his life to an overturned ship. Left Handed Kisses is a multilayered indie-folk number on which Bird duets with Fiona Apple. "Now you got me writing love songs/With a common refrain like this one here/Ba-a-a-a-a-a-by," he sings, referring to his inability to write a love song. To say that this collaboration is a match made in heaven would be an understatement.
Then we have tracks that are quintessentially Andrew Bird like Roma Fade along with its plucked violin strings and trademark whistling. Truth Lies Low leans towards experimental rock. Here, he sings "You do the walk of shame/From the comfort of your home … You empty all your blame/From your guilty bones," accompanied by dissonant guitar chords and spectral drums.
Besides the theme of love, an underlying sense of doubt and anxiety punctuates a large chunk of this record. "I once was found but now I'm lost," he sings on Saints Preservus, while on others, he wonders "Is it selfish, or is it brave?" for having a child (Valleys of the Young) and relates how his wife was coping with her illness ("When she was radioactive for seven days/How I wanted to be holding her anyway/But the doctors they told me to stay away/Due to flying neutrinos and gamma rays"). The title track finds Bird at his most self-aware, taking a jab at his verbose tendency: "You used to be so wilfully obtuse/Or is the word abstruse?/Semantics like a noose/Get out your dictionaries."
According to Bird, Are You Serious has "the strongest melodies and the strongest ideas that occurred to [him] over a three to four year period, distilled". In many ways, he's right. All of the tracks are awash with well thought out melodies, violin virtuosity and piercing intellect. He examines life from the perspective of a family man with brutal honesty while giving us one of the most accessible and inventive records we've had the pleasure of hearing this year.
THE PLAYLIST
UrboyTJ (featuring AMP)/ Kid Dang (Loud)
On his debut single Khao Gorn (Rebound), former 321 member UrboyTJ came off sounding as if he graduated from a rap academy organised by American rapper Future. While that was cool and all, we had a hard time getting to know who UrboyTJ really was. His follow-up, Kid Dang (Loud), though, is a step in the right direction. Featuring guest vocals from AMP, the track flows on a smooth hip hop melody, but the highlight here lies in the hybrid of Thai and English lyrics in the tradition of T-hop predecessors like Joey Boy, Thaitanium and F***ling Heroes.
Adult Jazz/ Eggshell
Eggshell is the first taste of Adult Jazz's just-released mini-album Earrings Off! Awash in the band's trademark outlandishness, the song finds the British quartet cranking up the weirdness to 11 as it weaves in and out of a cluster of askew industrial sound effects, percussive flourishes, frontman Harry Burgess' distorted vocals and half-spoken lyrics. There's a lot going on here, which keeps proceedings unpredictable, not to mention wildly innovative and utterly genre-blurring. For those partial to their offbeat debut LP Gist Is, this one should be right up your alley.
Cate Le Bon/ Wonderful
Wonderful is the first single taken from Cate Le Bon's new album Crab Day. The song finds the Welsh-born, LA-based singer-songwriter musing with the kind of vocal inflection that could perhaps be described as a faux-European accent. As far as the instrumentation goes, vibrant weirdness comes in abundance here whether its jangly guitars, saxophone or skittering xylophone. Recalling art-pop purveyors like Tune-Yards, the whole thing has just the right amount of whimsy and kookiness.
Money/ Three Days Drinking And As Many Lovers Too
If Cate Le Bon's Wonderful is a ray of sunshine, Money's mouthful new single Three Days Drinking And As Many Lovers Too is a quiet storm that has the potential to sink a ship. Clocking in at almost eight minutes, the sprawling acoustic number tells the story of a man on a bender ("After three days drinking, as many lovers too/I am baptised, don't be afraid of death"). Morose and bleak in equal measures, the song, according to frontman Jamie Lee, "should be listened to at night, drunk and alone". Right then, people, proceed at your own peril.
Ben Watt/ Fever Dream
For the uninitiated, Ben Watt is one half of English duo Everything But the Girl, the band who gave us a cover of Danny Whitten's Missing and I Don't Want to Talk About It. Watt's latest solo record, Fever Dream, a follow-up to 2014's excellent Hendra, finds him working with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, giving us a collection of songs wedged somewhere between folk rock and jazz. "Like feathers in the road black with rain/All the years are stuck to the years before/What we are is what we were," he sings over a quietly strummed acoustic guitar.
