The Albums That Matter: Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs

Andrew Bird

2005

In the past couple weeks I've been doing a lot of copying and pasting, trying to bring home to PoYB every blog post I've ever written on any blog. I stopped short, though, with a blog I had started and quickly abandoned in early college. I won't even write the name of the blog here, it's so dumb. And the writing is truly atrocious. I couldn't bear to copy it all here. But fuck it, I wrote about Andrew Bird in July 2008, and so I'm gonna copy it for you below. It's some of the dumbest shit I've ever written. I'll see you in the Stray Observations for some 2018 thoughts. Good luck.

ANDREW BIRD
July 25, 2008

I've been thinking a lot about what to write for Andrew Bird. I've thought long and hard. It's been pretty tough to come up with the right words, because, frankly, Mr. Bird baffles me so much. Therefore, I'll start out with an anecdote. Bear with me.

In the summer before junior year, I met this pretty cool girl. Let's call her Andrea. Now, I met this gal, and we felt an attraction, and it felt right. I really liked this chick. Our first date was fun, we enjoyed each other's company, and I asked her out. All was well... for a while.

Unfortunately, as I got to know her better, her flaws started to show. I started to realize that perhaps we weren't meant for each other. It kept me up all night; what the hell happened? Where did those blissful hours of our first weeks go? What changed?

I guess where I'm going with this is that while the fling was frivolous, everything was sunshine and rainbows and I was happy. Once I dug deeper, though, I realized that this was not what I had bargained for. And I backed out.

Where does Andrew Bird fit in? Well, about two years ago I purchased my first Andrew Bird album, entitled Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs. What a great find! These songs were pretty damn catchy. Bird was different, in a good way; he utilized the violin to its full potential, and boy, could that boy whistle! Good times.

I eagerly awaited Bird's new album, in hopes of finding the same joy that I found in our first fling. No such luck, apparently, because Armchair Apocrypha was just not for me. Try as I may, this album just didn't sink in. It kept me up all night; what the hell happened? Why wasn't Andrew Bird working for me? Where did those blissful hours of Eggs go? What changed?

For the life of me, I couldn't tell you. Armchair was just incredibly disappointing. I even went back into Andrew Bird's past, and tried to discover something, anything, that could salvage our relationship. The Swimming Hour was no good. The rest of his Bowl of Fire work just didn't digest. The only sizable enjoyment I got from Bird was his cameo work in the band Squirrel Nut Zippers, but he only played a small part in that.

I'm sorry, Andrew Bird, I think our time is over. Listen though, it's not you, it's me. Really. And I'll always cherish the time we spent together, but I really do think it's time we part. Good like with everything.

~~~~~~~~~~~

If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Skin Is, My"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Stray Observations

• Okay, so I guess I didn't talk THAT much about this album in the 2008 passage above. Armchair Apocrypha will be covered here on PoYB in a few weeks, at which point I'll go over exactly why I was wrong to make a snap judgment. Bird's Are You Serious will be right before that. So you're getting a lot of Andrew Bird opinions this spring, don't worry.
• The brief moment that I actually did spend talking about Mysterious Production of Eggs were the only accurate part. Yes, this album is catchy. Yes, he does use the violin well. Yes, the whistling is fun. This music isn't going to be selling out Madison Square Garden, but man, it's something special in its own small, strange way.
• I've never dated or even hooked up with anyone named Andrea. I don't know if this was a pseudonym for someone I actually was seeing, or just a straight-up lie. Clearly I was just vamping for time here, putting any old bullshit in a blog post to fluff my Andrew Bird "thoughts" so it wasn't one paragraph long. (And clearly, the specific choice of name is supposed to allude to the fact that I'm really talking about Andrew, not Andrea.)
  
• By Bird's own admission, most of his lyrics are nonsense. Don't bother asking, "What does he mean when he says such and such?" because you'll hit a dead end every time. "My dewy-eyed Disney bride what has tried / swapping your blood with formaldehyde / Monsters?" There's no hidden meaning here. It just sounds nice to the ears. Pretend the lyrics are just another instrument that Bird deploys, like his whistling.
• "Fake Palindromes" has a great string part that just hits so hard at the beginning of the song and sporadically throughout. So great that Pam and I used it at our wedding; "Fake Palindromes" played while we walked out of the ceremony as husband and wife. It fit so well.
• Couldn't find any interviews from 2005 in a very cursory search, but there was this short fawning review of an Andrew Bird concert, which, to be fair, does sound like something I'd really like to see.
• FRONT COVER: A drawing of a goat in a blanket (?), that, as far as I can tell, has no connection to any of the lyrics in the album. The cover was drawn by "poster maker" Jay Ryan. Yes, his primary descriptor on his Wikipedia page is "poster maker." I guess I didn't know that was a thing. But hey, somebody has to make rock concert posters, right?
• Other albums for which I will be deploying the "here's what I wrote about this album, quite terribly, in 2008" trope: Back in Black, Forever Changes, Searching for a Former Clarity, Strawberry Jam, At Mount Zoomer, and Funeral. Not sure how many of these will consist solely of a 2008 quote. I have more to say about some of those than I do Mysterious Production of Eggs.

NEXT TIME: Animals by Pink Floyd