Long Overdue Andrew Bird Review

Noble Beast, Andrew Bird's latest has been out for three weeks, so I figured it's about time for a review. It's taken me a while to gather my thoughts about this album because quite frankly it's nothing new. Now, for Andrew Bird that's not a bad thing.
Bird's style is very consistent. His seven other albums (not including the live Fingerlings series) demonstrate a range of upbeat to mellow songs, beautiful instrumentation (I love baroque pop), and brilliant lyrics. In all of this, his albums still each have different feels. Armchair Apocrypha (most recent release until Noble Beast) is very much a political album. Noble Beast diverges somewhat from the political aspects of Apocrypha, it is a little more personal full of stories and references as seen in this verse from the song Tenuous:

Tenuous at best was all he had to say when pressed about the rest of it,
the world that is
from proto-Sanskrit Minoans to porto-centric Lisboans
Greek Cypriots and and Hobis-hots
Who hang around in ports a lot

Noble Beast is not a departure from Bird's previous albums, but I don't want it to be. Too many artists try to do things completely different and fail, they forget what made them so good in the first place. Bird manages to explore musically while maintaining consistency in style.

If you can, listen to the deluxe album, Useless Creatures is an album in itself. It is wholly instrumental, and totally breathtaking. It's also great to study to. If you've never listened to Andrew Bird, what are you waiting for?