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Album Review: Andrew Bird ‘Break It Yourself’

It’s rare that a musician comes along in popular music with a very wide range of ability, a true and pure artistry, and the willingness to package it all together for the world to enjoy. Even rarer still that the world should notice what it has been given, but Andrew Bird stands out.

Bird is a singer/songwriter who has a bit of everything going for him. He’s a very talented multi-instrumentalist, primarily known for his violin, but he also prominently features the guitar, glockenspiel, and even his own whistling. He has been able to distill his own special auditory brew using these tools, without it becoming at all weird or hard to listen to. The songs he writes approach relatable human issues from new and intriguing angles, and are cleverly delivered without a lot of pretense.

Break It Yourself is an album full of love songs, but it would be hard to know that at times without paying close attention. Bird can be very subtle, and has a knack for weaving a delicate metaphor, or looking at personal matters and stories from a far-reaching and philosophical vantage point. When he does come right out and say how he feels, then, it only has more power behind it, and seems to bring clarity to the emotional landscape he’s been painting all along.

Bird was trained from a very young age to play the violin using the Suzuki method, which conditions artists to become very adept and naturally in tune with their instrument, shifting towards more traditional musical education later on. It’s a popular and well-respected method for classical violinists, but is probably even better suited to one like Andrew Bird, who is a great all-around performer with a touch of a rock star in him.

One criticism of the Suzuki method has always been that it stresses collaborative play over solo performances much more than the traditional method, but this has clearly not been a problem for Bird. He’s not only comfortable performing alone, but he often juggles his skills and instruments with loop pedals, becoming a one-man orchestra.

The songs on Break It Yourself are very complex and layered, but they come across as simple tunes, and are very easy to pick up and get into. Bird says he used to have a distaste for pop music, but today he seems much more willing to embrace widely listenable melodies and catchy hooks. The result should be nothing short of a revelation for popular music fans.

Though there are a lot of different techniques and influences on the record, the songs are not very dissimilar from one to the next, and he reaches into the same bag of tricks on almost every track. Andrew Bird’s growth and willingness to experiment appears to have slowed slightly here, with this his sixth solo release, but it’s hard to consider that sameness a very big fault on an album which is itself so very different from other music. It may not be particularly divergent from other Andrew Bird albums, but nobody else is doing what he does, and I wouldn’t want to see his techniques and sounds go extinct.

For many fans Break It Yourself will be regarded as Andrew Bird in perfect form. For the uninitiated, it’s a great spot to jump in.

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