Andrew Bird / Chop Suey / 28 September 2006

For the first time in recent memory, I feel relief at having paid a convenience charge when I arrive at Chop Suey and see that Thursday night’s Andrew Bird show has sold out. Inside, with everyone in the showroom or congregating in the fenced-in bar and the famous air conditioning retired for the season, it’s miserably hot. But if ever there was an argument for seeing live music in the discomfort of a crowded club, Andrew Bird is one of them.

Martin Dosh, along on the tour for rhythm section support, pauses to do a little hipster dancing while setting up the drums and keyboards. He starts playing and Andrew steps up to the glockenspiel, looking dapper in a velvet blazer with violin in hand and a guitar slung behind his shoulder. Whistling to rival the most talented theremin player and plucking violin strings, he begins with “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left.” An apt choice, explained by an overdose of caffeine from Vita’s an hour before the show.

Part of the reason for going out on a school night, standing shoulder to sweaty shoulder with your neighbors, and praying for a draft to cool things off is the simple excellence of the music. But the other part is seeing how it’s assembled. Certainly, a musical genius holing up in a studio and recording all of the parts to an album himself is hardly headline news, but even Prince takes a band along for the road show. Bird comes armed with an array of sampling pedals and lays down the loops piece by piece, re-composing from scratch and re-inventing the songs before a rapt audience.

By some miracle, what could read horribly hermetic or masturbatory is instead utterly fascinating to just about everyone present (except for the girl dragged to the show by her parents who is constitutionally required to feign out-of-her skull boredom). To some extent, this is due to Bird’s remarkable performance skills. Clearly delighting in the attention, reveling in the thrill of the highwire act he’s executing, he is all smiles, bitten lips, and bobbing head while crooning through intricate lyrics.

Throughout the show there is only a brief moment of tuning panic, but the rest appears to go off without a hitch. The violin temporarily becomes a blues guitar, a lot of new songs are shared, a live album is mentioned as available for purchase. And there is a gigantic spiral-painted phonograph horn at the back of the stage. For good measure, Andrew plays a few songs solo, demonstrating that he can captivate with just his voice and a guitar. But the night closes with Martin back onstage, creating a veritable two man orchestra. A forgotten violin line swells from a looping pedal to swirl around and fill out initially spare melodies. And so it goes. When the show ends with an incredibly sunny version of the apocalypse — dancing bears, pony rides, snacks! sign me up — a bearded guy sporting a mohawk starts jumping up and down and clapping his hands.

The movement doesn’t quite ripple through the crowd, but the applause is contagious enough that the guys return for a much-appreciated encore (”Tin foil” & “Dark Matter”) before calling it quits and sending everyone home to gush over the evening. And the phenomenal whistling skills in particular.

If you are heartbroken about having missed the show or find my description lacking, please listen to Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs or watch a live performance courtesy of his record label [righteousbabe]

Some of the songs played, in approximate order:
- “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left”, “Measuring Cups”
“Why?”, “Water Jet Cilice”, “Plasticities”, “Scythian Empire”, song about a caveman’s instructional hunting poem, “Armchair Apocrypha”, “Fake Palindromes”, a song about hippies and their t-shirts, “Tables and Chairs”, “Tin foil”, “Dark Matter”