Noble Beast

Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
Critic Score
Based on 30 reviews
2009 Ratings: #290 / 923
Year End Rank: #41
User Score
Based on 86 ratings
2009 Rank: #120
Liked by 8 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
The Guardian
Bird and his 10 collaborators use sound the way the impressionists daubed paint, layering elegiac violin melodies with pattering plucked notes, fuzzy or jangly guitar, clip-clop percussion, clicks and drones to create music that might be straightforwardly folky, brightly poppy or more experimental, but is always vivid and engaging.
90
Drowned in Sound

Where Andrew Bird succeeds so fervently with Noble Beast is in endowing it a vital, quixotic sense of humanity.

90
Alternative Press
It's less mopey than Bright Eyes, less pompous than Sufjan Stevens and better than almost everything else.
90
Consequence of Sound
Fans are sure to find plenty to like about this album, and new listeners will be pleased to hear an intelligent, well-crafted album that doesn’t have any major hiccups. More importantly, put on some headphones and turn the album up. You’ll hear intricate layers and careful production that prove Bird isn’t coasting by in the least.
83
A.V. Club

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.

82
Beats Per Minute
The record’s mysterious, elusive nature–best embodied by the stellar “Anonanimal,” a cryptic, esoteric song about transformation– hints that Bird is on the right path; his at times overly intellectual work is starting to become evocative. Wonderfully (and typically), he’s managed to do this in quite an unexpected and uncommon way.
80
Uncut
There’s a sense throughout that Bird’s head is engaged in a battle with his heart, as if aware that there’s a pop masterpiece squatting on the far horizons of his intuition.
80
The Skinny
This atmosphere is fleshed out by whistling and wordless backing vocals, while Bird's trademark awkward phrasing holds down lyrics that occasionally sound like they might fly off on the wings of their own weirdness.
80
Mojo
It may lack the wrong-footing eclecticism that made his name, but makes up for that in pure melodic charm.
80
Q Magazine
He's never been quite so on top of his game or quite so blessed with melodic magic.
80
AllMusic
Whatever romance he lacks in the textual medium he more than makes up for in melody.
75
Pitchfork

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.

75
Entertainment Weekly

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.

70
SPIN
With his SAT-acing vocabulary, Bird still rocks some of the best rhymes in the game, cobbling together his own foreign language from arcane terms.
70
Under the Radar

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.

70
Spectrum Culture

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.

70
Sputnikmusic

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.

70
American Songwriter
Depending on your perspective, Andrew Bird is either inching closer toward the mainstream or is still about a thousand miles away from it.
70
Rolling Stone

Here, he takes another leap, fusing Armchair's emotive indie rock with the chamber-music experimentalism of his early recordings.

70
musicOMH

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.

70
Tiny Mix Tapes
Although it’s undoubtedly consistent and enjoyable, these are the kind of adjectives that restrain this established songwriter from truly challenging or surprising his audience.
68
Coke Machine Glow

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.

67
Paste
Poetry has always been another tool in his box, but here more than ever, it seems that the lyrics serve as an instrument, not to be separated from the rest of the music, and helping to create a seamless but showy overall sound.
60
The Irish Times
His lyrics remain as incisive and intelligent as ever, but perhaps the omission of several meandering tracks would have made this beast more powerful than noble.
60
Slant Magazine

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.

60
The Fly
Whilst at times some of the tracks can just drift right past you, there’s certainly enough here to warrant further interest.
60
No Ripcord
There certainly isn't a lack of beautifully crafted, well produced music on this release, but if you're looking for a full plate of pop-inspired power ballads, stick to the last two discs.
60
PopMatters

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.

46
Pretty Much Amazing

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.

40
NOW Magazine
There are some sweet la-la-la bits and a bit of cheery whistling, but nothing jarring or abrasive which might prevent listeners from lapsing into a deep sleep by the sixth track.
79

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.

chessmess
75

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

mnartriam
65

One of my friends said it was his best based on the cover alone... but no, this is his weakest project in my opinion

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