Weather Systems

Fashion comes and goes, and art frequently goes with it. Fashion rather curiously caught Andrew Bird in its current in ...

With Weather Systems, violin virtuoso Andrew Bird took another conscious step to broaden his career when he moved out of Chicago to a farm in northwest Illinois, renovated the barn into a recording studio, and left the Rykodisc label for the small indie Grimsey (the album was later licensed to Ani DiFranco's Righteous Babe label) to create his most distinct recording to date.

This Chicagoan is unique in being an astonishing violin virtuoso devoting himself almost entirely to pop music. Founding Andrew Bird's Bowl Of Fire in the mid-'90s, his best work (2001's The Swimming Hour) takes in Appalachia, jump-blues and orch-pop in a flash-flood of American tradition