30 Days, 30 Albums - Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire - Oh! The Grandeur
Last week I briefly thought about making a Halloween mini-mix, but quickly realized that everyone would be doing that, and between seeing The Whigs, seeing Menomena (twice!) and trying to sleep a little I just didn't have the time and energy to come up with something clever enough to be different.
While thinking about it though, I did briefly dig out a tune from the second album by Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire - Oh! The Grandeur. "Beware" is fun and a little spooky and has a Halloween-ish enough title, and after I ditched the idea of a holiday mix I found myself still listening to the song. I've been a fan of Bird since The Mysterious Production of Eggs, and as he continues to release fantastic albums like this year's Armchair Apocrypha, I continue to dig deeper into the professional whistler's catalog. The discography on Bird's website lists twelve releases over the course of the past ten years, and I have eleven of them - together they paint a fascinating picture of the evolution of his music and career.
Oh! The Grandeur is the second album Bird did with his band Bowl of Fire, and it was released back in 1999. If you're only familiar with the musician's more recent work, it will certainly be a surprise - it has more in common with the work Bird did with '20s and '30s jazz revivalists Squirrel Nut Zippers back in the mid-'90s than it does with anything on Armchair Apocrypha. The album continues to display his band's infatuation with "that early 20th century thing," which was first displayed on 1998's Thrills, though you can see hints of Bird's conceptual, literate, hyper-intelligent style beginning to shine through. Mostly, it's just good old-fashioned, jazzy, gypsy-ish, theatrical fun, and the songs sound like they would be perfectly-suited to soundtrack some of those ancient, black and white, incredibly un-PC old cartoons you used to be able to find on TV late at night (which reminds me a lot of White Ghost Shivers, who are still doing a very similar thing). Bird's famous violin is definitely there - it's the backbone of almost everything he creates - but the complexly layered arrangements and proficient whistling have yet to really make an appearance at this point in the singer's career.
Oh and here's what Bird himself has to say about the album (from his website):
“Oh! The Grandeur was a weird one. I could feel this conceptual thing getting beyond my control. Rather than fight it I tried to embrace it. The title was poking fun at this self-awareness, the delusions of ... required to follow an idea through to the finished product. It also contains some heavier subject matter, and bizarre intros and outros creating a sort of theatrical feel. Many songs are like character profiles: “Feetlips” is about an obnoxious sort who still gets ahead just because he’s always on the scene, “Vidalia” is about my grandfather, “Tea and Thorazine,” about my autistic brother. It was a hard record to make, but I’m proud of it. Even the moments when I can hear my mind melting. I was trying to create a sort of through line or narrative and I had forced myself to stick to one medium or era and see it through. I was ready to cut loose, though, and immediately started on The Swimming Hour.”
It's nearly impossible to pluck out two tracks from the album to share with you, so if you like these by ALL means scoot on over to your favorite record store to pick up a copy of Oh! The Grandeur. It's available on Andrew Bird's website too.
Oh what the hell, here's another:
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