Got to the show a bit late and had to cantilever Chiara and I into a riser on the balcony. Had to balance on one foot, supported with a hand levered against some kind of smudgy ceiling strut to see anything. Finally eked out enough space to both breathe and stand just in time for the opener to go on.
Loney, Dear was that opener. They are a sort of Jens Lekman cum Belle and Sebastian outfit (as, indeed, one might expect a Swedish band to be) but perhaps not so precious as the sum of those two parts. I was utterly charmed. I liked them well enough to come home and buy their most recent album.
As is usually the case when rushing into a purchase of an opening band's record, I was somewhat disappointed by the studio versions of the songs that had seemed so lively to me in person. Oh well. Was still a very nice opening set and set the stage quite well for Andrew Bird.
So Andrew Bird is is like the terminator designed by Wes Anderson. He whistles, he skinny ties, he goes shoeless on stage, he plays violin and is enamored of electronic beats and samples. It's a hipster wet dream if one is the sort of hipster who wears sport coats and listens to NPR.
Guilty.
The set was a good mix of material from his new album, Noble Beast, and most of his other records from the past six years or so. They are all of a kind, all as quirky, melodic, and enjoyable as the next. The audience was engaged and I felt happy being there. There was nothing to surprise me, having seen him live before, but for those of you who have not, his routine deserves to be explained.
So Andrew Bird is a sort of indie-folk version of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins - you know, in the scene where he has the one man band apparatus on. Bird plays, as I've already mentioned, the violin, but he also plays the guitar, the vibraphone, and, in the sense that it can be played, his clarion whistle. On top of all that, his drummer runs the sample board while drumming, his bassist plays the saxophone and the clarinet and his second guitarist--well, he just played the guitar, really.
But, because he can't possibly play all of these at once (why not try strapping the drumkit to your inner thighs and the vibes to your lower back says I) he employs an array of stomp boxes the likes of which I've never seen. He'll play a brief bit of music on the violin and hit the stomp box to loop it. Then, he'll play another refrain and loop that. Then, he'll pluck a melody line on the violin and loop that. He might whistle a few seconds of something and loop that. Eventually, he'll play some chords on his beautiful Gibson Les Paul and loop those before finally settling in to the lead guitar bit and the singing of the song, all the while backed by a piece of music seven or eight players deep - all of which are he and his three bandmates.
So every song is a stereophonic palimpsest and half the fun for the audience is watching (and hearing) the thing being built and then controlled throughout by Andrew incessantly jabbing at the row of buttons arranged at in front of him with his socked feet, bringing back or silencing little snippets of music he put down live at the beginning of the number. Its a great show and one can't help but appreciate the effort when so many would have just prerecorded whatever samples they might need and played them the same every night. Add to all of this the fact that his voice is soaringly better live than on record - a kind of arch version of Jeff Buckley's morose but exquisitely controlled wail - and I think anyone would say they had been to a great show.
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