Something's up with Andrew Bird. Despite the obvious being-named-after-a-class-of-animals thing (check your taxonomy, kids), the man lives on a farm with chickens and he named his new record "The Mysterious Production of Eggs." Physically, he has a nose like a beak, and he's really skinny, meaning he must eat like a bird. Plus, the guy can whistle better than most parakeets. His mother must have been a blue jay or something.
Thursday night, Bird hawked his wares at the District's Black Cat. In tow were three-piece Head of Femur and multi-instrumentalist Martin Dosh.
Chicago's Head of Femur was the first band of the night. To their credit, the band, which has played as an octet in the past, but was merely a trio Thursday, had some interesting instrumentation. Keyboardist Ben Armstrong picked up a lot of slack, playing bass parts and piano melodies at the same time. Frontman Matt Focht divided his time between acoustic guitar and drums, and electric guitarist Mike Elsener kept to himself. But overall, the music served mostly as background noise to a chipper crowd, happy to be indoors and out of the first big chill of the season, none too interested in self-gratifying power ballads.
Between the Head and the Bird, there was Martin Dosh, who wowed the crowd with a Jon Brion-esque feat of daring one-man band-ness. Nestled amongst a small city of instruments and electronics, Dosh created live loops and samples, building full orchestras in mere moments. He would pack his purely instrumental inventions with keyboard, synthesizer, drum set, drum machine and electronic blips until they were about to explode - and then stop everything except his Rhodes to build it all up again. The songs were lush and comfortable, slightly jazzy and slightly epic. It was really a marvel of modern musical technology and know-how.
Bird took the stage just in time to accompany the last few bars of Dosh's last song. Decked out in a skinny black tie and casual suit, the Bird-man looked like he was an extra in the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" video, minus the obnoxious facial hair.
Bird also employed electronics to make his performance fuller and more complex. Dosh accompanied on the drum set and sometimes keyboard. Bird plays barefoot, the better to control his many delay, octaver and loop pedals to make his single violin sound like the Bird Philharmonic strings.
The classically trained violinist pecked out tunes from his latest album, including such choice tracks as "Skin is, My," "MX Missiles" and "Fake Palindromes." He is a very interesting performer - spastically bouncing around the stage, pounding foot pedals, frantically switching between guitar, violin (played both traditionally and like ukulele) and glockenspiel, forgetting lyrics, making awkward eyes at the crowd and talking about how great The Apocalypse will be. He displayed a stronger vocal ability than heard on the record, experimenting with melody lines seemingly on the fly. As confining as playing along to a recorded track is, it was amazing that Bird could allow himself to stretch out and explore the space he laid out for himself.
Sometimes he'd mess up on a looped track, curse and start over again. Those moments are always refreshing to see - it makes the performers more human, takes a little chunk out of the fourth wall. Some might say he "messed up," but it all worked in the end. He looked a little harried by the end of the show, and by the second encore abandoned electronics altogether, playing his violin sans microphone and pedals.
The first encore was a highlight of the show, when he came out solo and played a surprise rendition of Son House's "Grinnin' in Your Face." The originally gritty, a cappella blues tune was revamped and set to a jazzy guitar, with Bird showing off those clear pipes of his.
Most impressive was Bird's amazing whistle. It sounded like '60s sci-fi movie therein, piercing and eerie. As Bird said during his studio performance on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" Thursday afternoon (which has been archived for public consumption), he didn't start incorporating whistling in his shows until a couple of years ago, when he discovered "it could really get people's attention." The novelty never wore off for the audience.
