Andrew Bird has perfected his unique approach to songwriting and songcraft over the length of his 16-year career; his most recent album Break It Yourself showcases Bird’s strengths, but by this time around it seems like old news. The songs are lush and diverse enough to avoid monotony, but his reliance on tried and true methods inhibits the album’s impact. The opener “Desperation Breeds…” ruminates on the mysterious decline of bee populations; Bird’s meditative lyrics nestle inside the buzzing and soft landscape of the track. Unfortunately the strength of his lyrics is undercut by the song, which is basically an index of Andrew Bird’s tropes; in other words it sounds exactly what you expect an Andrew Bird song to sound like. Whether or not this is a bad thing comes down to opinion, but for me it makes the album a touching, gorgeous but ultimately empty exercise.
Although I could say more about Bird’s conservative approach, the spots in the album that transcend his static approach say more about Bird and Break It Yourself than Bird’s overall lack of dynamism. The shift away from the more guitar-heavy sound that Bird adopted on recent albums is very welcome — he is at his best when working within the limits of his violin. His comfort is obvious in the way he can comingle the instrument’s dulcet and shrill sides. Bird manipulates both the plucked and bowed sounds of his violin to make his songs bounce or fly as he sees fit. His knack for creating expansive soundscapes relies on the textural contrast between these two sides of the instrument.
But the most creative outburst in Break It Yourself comes from Bird sneaking under his own sound and offering a fresh, and downright awesome, section of afro-Caribbean (and ghostly Appalachian) expression in “Danse Carribe.” The song is a perfect example of what Andrew Bird could be; he infuses the typical sweetness of his sound with a crunchy edge that makes the song full in three dimensions. The song’s novel texture implodes the album’s staid conservatism with possibility. In his next release, I hope that Bird can pickup the pieces of his imploded sound and rearrange them in a way that strives towards growth, not just perfection.