Where Andrew Bird succeeds so fervently with Noble Beast is in endowing it a vital, quixotic sense of humanity.
About a third of Noble Beast coasts along like this, generating an amiable atmosphere while advancing the album's contemplations of evolution and the loss of self. But then Bird arrives at a song like 'Fitz And The Dizzyspells', or 'Anonanimal', and suddenly Noble Beast turns into a higher form of pop music, so beautifully, horrifyingly evolved.
A long hike through the folds in Andrew Bird's brain is what you sign up for when you play one of his albums. He's been wandering that path since 2003's Weather Systems, when he retired his former band, the Bowl of Fire, and moved to Western Illinois to live with his thoughts on an old farm. On his new album, Noble Beast, Bird can sometimes seem too far inside his own head. And he also appears aware of it, addressing that solitude on "Effigy": "When one has spent too much time alone..." He doesn't answer with another lyric-- perhaps he doesn't have an answer. Instead, he lets you fill in the blank while he reels off a pretty, rustic violin figure.
Noble Beast veers off into a cheerily nonspecific world of jangly guitars and meandering melodies that evoke everyone from Okkervil River to Radiohead without ever making an impact of their own.
This is all a lot of hand-wringing over very little: Noble Beast is still an amazing record, Bird’s fourth in a row (if one counts the Soldier On EP), with only those tiny spots where the rest of the world bleeds through.
Though it’s not the masterpiece Andrew Bird has hinted at since Weather Systems, there’s a gradually unfolding mystery and beauty to Noble Beast.
With Noble Beast, time stands still for a brief moment until a song eventually hits a certain plateau, but sometimes that plateau can be too distant.
Here, he takes another leap, fusing Armchair's emotive indie rock with the chamber-music experimentalism of his early recordings.
While there are no tracks that etch themselves into your memory after one listen as there are on Eggs, his music is sonically adventurous and richly layered. There’s all manner of good things going on here and much pleasure to be derived for the listener.
Noble Beast overcomplicates what should be a simpler formula; the meat is in Bird’s performances, the virtuoso skills at his disposal, not the antiseptic display of distorted guitar tones that the album’s best song unfortunately resorts to in its final section.
Similar to witnessing Bird's high-wire concert act, in which he deftly loops figures from guitar, violin, and vocals to create living sound colleges of pop songs, one comes away from Noble Beast feeling more impressed than moved.
Bird probably could have stood to cull a few of the weaker numbers, and with the additional room, might have reworked a few of the selections from Useless Creatures into experimental pop songs, thereby tempering his lack of risk taking on Noble Beast.
It is fabulously disappointing that in a day and age where hundreds of artists are competing for your attention, Andrew Bird has refused to use his fascinating musical ability to create the zeitgeist of an album of which he is surely capable, instead acquiescing with a record that could quite easily have been released by any number of relatively unknown folk artists back in the 90s.
A patient listen for sure and a bit of a grower, but definitely a rewarding listen as well. When Bird is operating in peak musical and lyrical form, as in "Tenuousness" or "Oh No," the results are captivating.
It is like taking a care free tour inside Andrew Bird's head. The strong, curious personality that Bird possesses is just so delicate and begs to be explored. This is exactly what Bird does in this album. His quirky, self aware lyrics gives the album such a refreshing style that is not often experienced with a guy, that has consistently been putting out stellar albums throughout his career.
There is no censoring of his thoughts, nor is there any precautions taken for those who would not want ... read more
One of my friends said it was his best based on the cover alone... but no, this is his weakest project in my opinion
1 | Oh No 4:20 | 84 |
2 | Masterswarm 6:35 | 96 |
3 | Fitz and the Dizzyspells 3:36 | 68 |
4 | Effigy 5:06 | 52 |
5 | Tenuousness 3:51 | 64 |
6 | Nomenclature 2:54 | 66 |
7 | Ouo 0:20 | 47 |
8 | Not a Robot, but a Ghost 5:37 | 72 |
9 | Unfolding Fans 0:57 | 63 |
10 | Anonanimal 4:47 | 56 |
11 | Natural Disaster 4:18 | 68 |
12 | The Privateers 3:24 | 66 |
13 | Souverian 7:18 | 70 |
14 | On Ho! 1:08 | 63 |
#5 | / | NPR |
#10 | / | A.V. Club |
#25 | / | Stereogum |
#27 | / | The Line of Best Fit |
#28 | / | musicOMH |
#44 | / | PopMatters |
#70 | / | Consequence of Sound |