Photos by Tom Wallace. Andrew Bird performing at St. Mark's on Thursday evening. Andrew Bird is known for eclectic choices -- all of his records include violin, wordy lyrics and lots of expert whistling -- but even he admits that his current seven-show tour of churches is out of the ordinary.
"I sort of indulged myself," he says.
The Chicago-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist will take up residence Thursday through Saturday at the intimate St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis for three sold-out shows featuring mostly instrumental music. (Additional tickets were announced for sale Thursday). Four similar concerts at the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago will follow.
Though the church shows are a unique idea in the indie-rock world, those who know Bird's music aren't very surprised by the move. His records, especially 2007's "Armchair Apocrypha" and this year's "Noble Beast," are ornate affairs, full of plucked violin strings, phrases such as "calcified arithmetists" and the various clicks and taps that accompany his percussion section.
Bird, who has played violin since childhood, says the idea for the church shows came from "playing Handel's 'Messiah' in a church every year. I always sort of liked that dark, gothic [atmosphere]" -- though, he adds, "It's warm in there."
That combination of darkness and warmth is also in abundance on "Noble Beast," which features catchy hooks and lived-in production as backdrops to songs about hospital visits and the fear of aging. It's among Bird's best, and will likely place in many Top 10 lists for 2009.
In late 2008 and early '09, Bird wrote about these and other songs for a New York Times blog about songwriting (along with colleagues including Roseanne Cash and Suzanne Vega). Bird primarily wrote about "Noble Beast's" opener "Oh No," whose main instrumental phrase was based on a child he heard crying on an airplane. The blog, featuring Bird's thoughts on songwriting and accounts of studio time, was a fascinating read. He says the blogging was fun, but not fun enough to try again.
"The process of writing about music is deliberate, and the process of [making] music isn't," he explains. "It was an interesting experiment, but I don't know if I'd want to do it again. Being hyper-aware of your process is not always a good thing."
Bird is known for experimenting onstage as well as in the studio, but the church mini-tour -- which he has dubbed "Gezelligheid," a Dutch term that roughly translates to "coziness" -- will be much more scaled back.
"I'm a little nervous," he explains, "because I am used to using everything in my arsenal, and I'm trying to hold back and do less. I'm pretty confident that it's going to be cool, I'm just trying not to have a plan."
This may sound like an unwise approach for such an unconventional venue, but Bird sounds eager to do more with less: He'll be using his trademark phonograph-style "horns" for natural amplification, and there will be minimal ambient lighting. Given this basic setup, don't expect to see Bird's frequent Minneapolis collaborators, such as percussionist Martin Dosh or saxophonist Mike Lewis or singer Haley Bonar, at St. Mark's.
While most Bird performances involve spectacles such as on-the-spot sampling, the Gezelligheid shows will be more about the spectacle of the surroundings. "It will be less about the words, and letting the sounds all mingle in the space," says Bird. "So I won't be doing stuff that doesn't belong. I kind of miss going to shows, or going to play somewhere, where you can space out and not focus, and be in a meditative state."
Bird's church shows in the past have been well-received. The Guardian newspaper gave this quintessentially British review of his performance at London's St. Giles Church last year: "The cumulative effect is heavy, claggy, soporific, but in the way that a particularly delicious treacle sponge pudding is claggy and soporific."
Listeners familiar with Bird's instrumental album "Useless Creatures" - a bonus disc to "Noble Beast" - will feel right at home at these shows. But for those who aren't used to attending concerts without lyrics, Bird hopes you'll feel like he did playing Handel all those years ago: like you're part of something "intense and spiritual," something bigger than you.
That is, like you're at an Andrew Bird concert.
