Break It Yourself
Andrew Bird's latest album, which includes a duet with St. Vincent, finds the multi-instrumentalist working more collaboratively with a band than he has in a long time.
Andrew Bird’s songwriting approach is seemingly paradoxical, at once highly improvisational and long-simmering, with material sometimes taking years to finally gel together. The results are familiar to anyone who’s followed his string of breezily baroque albums over the last decade, full of virtuosic and engaging…
Last year, Andrew Bird contributed a cover of the Kermit the Frog classic “Bein’ Green” to a Muppets tribute album.…
After a long string of lush, intricately plotted collections of classically minded indie pop, crafty violinist, minutia-loving songwriter and peerless whistler Andrew Bird offers up Break It Yourself, an intricately plotted collection of classically minded indie pop that eschews the meticulous studio refinement of Armchair Apocrypha and Noble Beast.
Now eight albums deep into his career, it’s tempting to view Andrew Bird as a latter day, violin-toting Paul Simon. With the syrupy, seductive voice and the tunes (my God, the tunes) considered; the greatest trick the two have in common is convincing the world that their songs are simple: they share a marvellous knack of creating a sum that’s far less complex than the parts.
Welcome to Andrew Bird's nineth solo outing—an album of surprisingly unfussy folk compositions augmented with his trademark layers of violins, slurred vocals, and multi-octave whistling.
With ‘Break it Yourself’, Andrew Bird is taking his first steps out into the sunshine.
<p>Andrew Bird's new album is marked by emotional depth and sadness, writes <strong>Ally Carnwath</strong></p>
Break It Yourself’s cover is a poor predictor of its contents: a series of thoughtful stream-of-conscious performances.
Andrew Bird's previous album was terrific, but this is even better – tender, inventive and unique, writes <strong>Maddy Costa</strong>