MP3 Monday: Andrew Bird

Whistling dixie... - By Morgan Short, Jan 25, 10

MP3 Monday is a weekly SmartShanghai column, serving up mp3s from bands living and making music in China (or coming to China, or thinking about coming to China, or whatever). Copyright holders: if you would like your song removed, please email us here, and we'll honor your request promptly.

Here's some songs ahead of the Andrew Bird show this Friday at the Zhijiang Dream Factory. Lots of people excited to see the Bird. SmartShanghai has gotten a lot of emails from people looking for tickets, so click here if you still haven’t gotten yours.

Bird is one of these singer/songwriters types pedaling indie folk, albeit coming from an eclectic and idiosyncratically academic background in classic American genres: old timey jazz and swing. He even played with the Squirrel Nut Zippers back in the day -- ahh, the 90s! He’s a classically trained violinist, but plays about 800 other instruments as well, and is sort of famous for whistling a lot. Serious. He's been releasing albums since the late '90s but blew up in a big way in 2007, with the release of Armchair Apocrypha. His earlier stuff was a bit niche -- good reviews and well-received by a lot of musicians -- but that 2007 album was a big hit with the indie rawk blogs, and saw Bird crossing over to appeal to the armies of people who tend to also like Wilco and Sufjan Stevens. Currently, he's one of the most universally revered guys making music in the States. His follow up, Noble Beast in 2009, got on a bunch of year-end best of lists as well.

Mr. Bird also garners rave reviews for his live shows, which are pretty involved, and the basis for a lot of his word-of-mouth success in the mid 00's. This concert is being put on by Split Works, who last year hosted some very well-received shows by Jens Lekman and Jose Gonzalez. I would imagine Andrew Bird would go over with a similar crowd.

Here’s some songs. These are from an earlier Andrew Bird album called Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs. It was released in 2005, and pops up at number 181 on Pitchfork’s Top 200 albums of the ‘00s. Take that however you will. The full title of that hot second song is "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head to the Left." I just can’t fit it on the player 'cause it's just too goddamn long and whimsical. It's from that same album, but this is the live version.

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So here’s that ticketing link again and here’s the event listing.

More Split Works stuff: preparations are ongoing for their Jue Festival (pron. JEW festival... just kidding). Click here to sign up for their newsletter. In addition to that, we hear they’re working at bringing over additional bands in February. Good times. Let's hope they can do, make, say, think it into happening.

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