Break It Yourself

Andrew Bird - Break It Yourself
Critic Score
Based on 28 reviews
2012 Ratings: #121 / 1118
User Score
Based on 112 ratings
2012 Rank: #63
Liked by 8 people
March 6, 2012 / Release Date
LP / Format
- / Label
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CRITIC REVIEWS

91
A.V. Club

A beautifully free-flowing set of tunes that soar and waft like a flock of starlings, building to a quietly epic mood that is too ruminative and introspective to suffer from grandiosity. 

90
No Ripcord

When the sun shines outside, I challenge you to listen to Break It Yourself and not smile.

86
Paste

Above all, Andrew Bird is a highly skilled musician capable of crafting an album full of delightful little moments that make the album worth a fair listen, and more.

80
Drowned in Sound

By playing it straight and singing it even straighter, he’s created an intensely listenable and emotional album that’s impossible not to relate to.

80
musicOMH

Disparate and idiosyncratic yet still unified and every day, Break It Yourself is a record which is beguilingly simple but retains and recasts Bird’s signature complexity.

79
Beats Per Minute

There’s an avid attention to detail, small instrumental tracks, and a wry, almost deprecated sense of humour at points.

75
The 405

It represents a further fleshing out of ideas more recently explored in the career of a well recognized songwriter.

75
Pitchfork

It all amounts to a constructed world that sounds outré at first but winds up being a startlingly astute reflection of our own as you settle into it.

70
Under the Radar

Break It Yourself often plays like being front row at the world's most engaging hootenanny.

70
Consequence of Sound

The hooks don’t quite sink in as far as some of those on past records, and the diversity doesn’t quite match either, but the depth of the intelligent, philosophic experience grows after each listen.

50
PopMatters

An album with a solid first half, that restores the energy and vitality of Bird’s musical vision, and then slowly and steadily leaches that energy back out of it.

Doofy
79

My favourite of the three Andrew Bird albums I've heard so far - I'm finally starting to understand what the fuss is about.

This expansive folk has a natural ebb and flow to it, with well worked in chamber orchestral detours.

Phoenix
NR

I'm sorry, I was bored after the opening track. Andrew Bird sort of painted himself into a corner with this record.

FAVORITE TRACK: DESPERATION BREEDS...

mnartriam
85

Nobody:

Andrew Bird:
I can play the violin

mnartriam
85

Nobody:

Andrew Bird:
I can play the violin

Codak_002
92

The writing isn’t as good as My Finest Work Yet but holy damn the instrumentation here is so incredibly superb that it makes up for it. The combination of plucked violin, beautiful orchestral arrangements, and his freakishly on tune whistling makes for some of the most lush and blossoming instrumentation I’ve heard in a while

78

It’s okay. As I’ve said in other AB reviews, his music doesn’t translate well to recording - when live, he is a force that needs to be seen to be appreciated.

The songs are fine, he’s still a virtuoso of the violin (& whistling)… but most of his albums won’t blow you away.

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Added on: December 6, 2011