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Text Box: Music Pick
Category: Alternative
Artist: Andrew Bird
Album: Armchair Apocrypha
Release date: March, 2007

Armchair Apocrypha

Armchair Apocrypha is Bird's latest album and marks his first collaboration with percussionist Martin Dosh. Dosh and Bird compliment each other well, both looping multiple instruments into their intricate rhythms. The addition of Dosh's percussion rounds out and fills Bird's eerie strings and whistles, giving the album a fuller, bassier sound. Bird's songs remain as witty and complex as ever, but the new arrangements create a less radical sound and may be slightly (that's slightly) reminiscent of early Radiohead. They are, however, beautiful and haunting, like all of Bird's work.

Bird has switched from Righteous Babe to Fat Possum records, and, for whatever reason, the album seems more carefully produced. It's cleaner and more complete than Weather Systems and The Mysterious Productions of Eggs, and definitely moves Bird in an unexpected, and very interesting, direction.

For More Bird:
http://www.righteousbabe.com/artists/andrewbird/index.asp

Listen to Mysterious Production of Eggs:
http://www.righteousbabe.com/artists/andrewbird/tmpoe/index.asp

Listen to Live at Paradiso:
http://www.fabchannel.com/andrew_bird

For More Dosh:
http://www.doshfamily.com/

Recommend an album.

The Final Word

In short:

Highly recommended. It's an album that will impress nearly everyone and doesn't get old with multiple plays. People who already admire Bird will be very interested in the new sounds Dosh contributes, and they'll be pleased that it lives up to the high standards of Bird's prior albums.

Interesting Topics:

Scythian Empire
Cartography
Fatality
Operation (the children's game)
Various Prescription Drugs

Track List:

Fiery Crash
Imitosis
Platicicities
Heretics
Armchairs
Darkmatter
Simple X
Cataracts
Scythian Empires
Spare-Ohs

Best Tracks (so far):

Plasticities
Heretics

Most Radiohead-ish Lyrics:

"Some people wake up on Monday mornings/ barring maelstroms and red flare warnings/ with no explosions and no surprises/ perform a series of exercises" -Simple X

Rating:

4 out of 5

More music? Try a cup of tea.

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