Andrew Bird has a cold. Hey, it’s one of the byproducts of sleeping on a tour bus with 10 people, he says, so he’s gotten used to it. After all, it has been 20 years since he released his first album. Bird has seen his fair share of tour bus interiors.
The Chicago native may have been in the game for two decades, but his breakthrough really came in 2005. The remarkable album Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs set Bird up as master of quirky baroque pop, a superb violinist and a damned fine whistler to boot.
Still, after all these years he is something of an oddity: hugely respected by his peers, healthy fanbases dotting the globe, but far from a household name. You get the feeling he'd prefer to keep it that way, which makes things a little difficult considering that Are You Serious, his new album, contains, he says, his most blatantly personal lyrics to date.
That would be largely down to his 2010 marriage to fashion designer Katherine Tsina and the birth of his now four-year-old son Sam. But explaining those lyrics? That’s another story.
“It’s strange, because I think of myself as fairly private and not the most forthcoming person personality-wise. And yet I do this thing, where I sing about these things,” says Bird, his low, soft and deep speaking voice at odds with the tender quiver that informs his music.
“I mean, all my songs have been personal – I could tell you a personal story about every one, it’s just a matter of how deeply it’s buried. In this case, it’s less encrypted and it’s close to the surface, and some of the language is quite plain and blunt.
“It’s an ironic thing, because you feel secure for the first time with what you’re doing and who you’re with, and you want to celebrate that. But it also exposes that, and puts it at risk in some ways. I haven’t quite figured it out, especially now that people are asking me about it. I’m not sure what damage I’m gonna cause every time I open my mouth.”
Don’t pin him down
Are You Serious is Bird's first record of original material since his Hands of Glory EP in 2012. Since then he has recorded a covers album of songs by The Handsome Family ( Things Are Really Great Here, Sort Of . . .), scored the TV series Baskets starring Louis CK and Zach Galifiniakis (the latter is a friend) and made Echolocations: Canyon, a nature-themed album of instrumentals inside the Coyote Gulch canyons in Utah. So categorising Andrew Bird's music is tricky, to say the least.
Trained in the Suzuki method of violin as a child, Bird began his recording career along more traditional classical lines. But he pioneered the art of violin-led indie-pop, since practiced by the likes of Owen Pallett and Patrick Wolf.
“The violin? I disrespect the instrument, wilfully,” he answers, reluctantly, when the notion of being a precursor to the genre is mooted. “I never wanted it to be my identity. It just happens to be this thing at hand that I can use and pull out of it what I need to get the job done.
“So do I wanna claim credit for that? I dunno. The more I think about it, the more I wanna move away from it. As good as some of that stuff is, it’s like comparing Jimi Hendrix to Neil Young just because they both happen to play guitars.”
Now, at 42, Bird finds himself making music that is more eclectic than ever before; there are songs on the new album, such as opener Capsized and the Fiona Apple duet Left Handed Kisses, that are positively groovy.
“When I first started out,” he says, “I was coming from this somewhat trained or studied background, but I was never cut out for that. Yet I still liked fairly complex music. I would see these very Chicago-in-the-mid-90s kind of raw, stripped-down post-rock, or whatever you wanna call it. It was very brash and the more out of tune your instrument was, the better.
“That was the antithesis of where I was coming from, but I got it. I was enticed by it, and it seemed mysterious to me. But there was only so far I could go with that. I wasn’t gonna suddenly forget everything I’d learned. Then I bought a conversion van and started driving around the country and playing dive bars, and that was a very romantic life.
“But I look back, and there were moments where I made very odd decisions that went against what all my other peers were doing, that were really important – like, moving out to the country when I was 29, being isolated in a barn for four years and then travelling around solo and having this very internal world that translated to the stage.
“I’ve just always kind of been looking forward.”
That said, he admits to “a retrospective kind of attitude” in recent times.
“I’ve had some interesting conversations with musicians that I really respect, ‘elder statesmen’ if you wanna call it that, like Randy Newman, Paul Simon. Y’know, Randy Newman is like, 76, and he’s still pushing himself and trying to figure out how the heck he did that stuff in the past; both looking back and looking forward. Those two guys are still doing good work. They’re still conflicted and suffering.”
Long time yet
So, there’s a good 20 or 30 years left of suffering for his art, then?
Bird pauses. “That sounds . . . exhausting.” He allows himself a chuckle.
“But I still think that there’s work to be done, and I still think that every time I make a record, there’s still things I haven’t nailed yet – especially in regards to singing. As soon as I get on stage and start playing the songs, I start to get way more playful with the vocal and I think God, if I could only capture this on record.
“But that’s a good thing, y’know? Thirteen records in, and I’m still thinking,Next time. Next time!”
- Andrew Bird plays Dublin's Vicar Street on April 30th. Are You Serious is out now
