2001 // Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire, The Swimming Hour // “Case In Point”
Reviews: Popmatters // Pitchfork
First, let’s talk about how hard it was to pick just one to share from this album. The barnstorming opener “Two Way Action”? The cheeky and dark take on mental health issues “Core and Rind”? The David Sedaris-does-Billie Holiday cigarettes-and-coffee blues of “Why?” and “Headsoak”? The epic, socially conscious “11:11”? The multilayered retro charms of “Too Long” or “How Indiscreet” or “Fatal Flower Garden” or “Satisfied” or “Way Out West” or “Dear Old Greenland”? I’ve listened to this record for the past three days, torn. As I write this, I’m still not sure which to choose.
To be fair, I actually thought about showcasing Bird’s early career (viz., before he became an NPR darling and the kind of artist who’s profiled in the New York Times Magazine) with a track from Oh! The Grandeur, the first Bowl of Fire album from 1999, but I immediately called out my own disingenuousness. Yeah, that was good, but! The Swimming Hour, you guys! This record totally blew my mind in 2001.
I really was in love with this one. I’d never heard songs like this before. There were guitars, sassy lady backup singers, sure — but also classical-flavored pizzicato and complex string arrangements mixed with genial old-timey fiddle-sawing. And Bird’s voice, his lazy drawl tumbling over all those complicated lyrics that sounded like something coming from 75 years ago.
I’m sitting here looking at the CD case, and it has that look that only comes to albums you’ve really, really loved. And something that never happens anymore: It’s cracked, it’s dirty, the liner notes are worn. I’m surprised that the disc actually played at all; the CD/DVD drive on my MacBook is extremely persnickety. (It particularly hates mix CDs burned on PCs in the early/mid-2000s in particular.)
Mostly I’m amazed that this record got a 9 on Pitchfork, which, I think, in 2001, was harder to achieve than it is today. However, I can’t say I agree with the consistently high-ish ratings its given to Bird’s solo records since the self-relelased Weather Systems in 2002.
Because, see, after the Bowl of Fire configuration didn’t work out (despite contributions from some very fine collaborators, like big-voiced ladies Nora O’Connor and Kelly Hogan), Bird played what was gonna be a one-off solo gig, and suddenly, the mythology of Andrew Bird, the whistler, the looper, the barefoot intellectual fiddle player, was born.
It was only a matter of time before I outgrew Andrew Bird, or he outgrew me. It was an amicable departure, I guess, sometime around the time Armchair Apocrypha, Bird’s third solo album, was released in 2007. The less we can say about this dangerous foray into jammy self-indulgence, and the show I suffered through on that tour, the better.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that as the lyrics went stale and the compositions dulled, Bird became more and more popular. This is the way the way mainstream popularity works, no matter the economic conditions. The more people you can make happy with your music, the better. And hey, yeah, you might lose some long-time listeners along the way — some attrition should be expected! — but the obsesso completists will make up for that loss with their continued devotion.
I realize that I might be letting on that the loss of Andrew Bird to the inevitable (that is, my changing interests and his career evolution) was more annoying than, say, when Garbage fizzled or Matthew Sweet started collaborating with other people or Natalie Merchant left 10,000 Maniacs — or any other number of bands I’ve loved either split or stopped making music I found interesting and inciting. It wasn’t. It was disappointingly normal, and maybe that’s why it was so hard to pack up my love for Bird and pretty much act like his most recent albums didn’t exist. I think I’d expected, given that he had buckets of talent to spare, to be able to shoulder through the mid-career wastelands.
But he didn’t.
And I occasionally find myself humming a melody from this album, or the other winner, The Mysterious Production of Eggs, without a desire to revisit either album, or even reconnect with Bird’s music. Listening to The Swimming Hour again over the past few days, I realized I hadn’t listened to it in at least five years, maybe more.
I don’t know what to call this feeling — it isn’t nostalgia, for that word actually has quite putrescent connotations. We’ll have to invent some other word for it. But not today. Later. For now, Bird will just have to be … a signifier for everything that’s changed in my life in the past five years.
