(2020) Andrew Bird - HARK!


Review:
When he’s not eating, sleeping or talking, celebrated songwriter, Andrew Bird, says he’s often whistling. At first, though, the Suzuki method-trained violinist thought whistling sounded cheap, not classically musical or respectable enough for his nuanced records. But, after dropping a few without his signature high-end sound, Bird relented. Now, he and his whistle are creatively inseparable on his many anticipated releases. It even landed prominently on his new holiday album, Hark! Bird recorded the new record over two periods of time – one pre-pandemic and one during. “I didn’t think to use whistling on any of my records for the first three or four,” Bird says. “Because who would think after all the pain and suffering of learning a difficult instrument like the violin, the money would be in whistling. It just seemed gimmicky or something, it didn’t seem valuable. But the fact is, I just whistle all the time.” To many, Bird is known for his violin. He can play it perfectly for a pop song or he can compose a baroque, textured, wood-grain piece of music that could last 1,000 years. He also has a sweet, midrange tenor voice that’s more than capable of carrying a tune. But it’s his humming bird-like whistle that tends to cut through any other sound or movement in whatever room or concert hall in which he plays. “The whistle is just like glass,” he says. “It gets people’s attention. It’s a great way to carry a tune. It can be intense and operatic – like an aria. I just started to realize the power of it, especially when I do more of my solo stuff. I didn’t have the power of the band to get people’s attention. So, I relied on the whistle to get people to stop talking.” On Hark!, one whistle-rooted song stands out in particular, a beautiful rendition of “Oh Holy Night,” in which Bird powerfully performs the melody with a looming, ominous cadence that recalls the Cathedral-befitting original. His whistle, in a way, is a full choir over his finger-plucked violin strings accompaniment. Another standout track on the new record is “Christmas in April,” which Bird wrote in a more relaxed way than many of his other songs in years previous. “I’ve always been fantasized about merging recording with my every day life,” Bird says. “There’s always this sense of anticipation when you’re about to make a record. I’ve always wanted to spread out the pressure.” So, Bird recorded many of the song ideas on Hark! on his phone’s voice memos – at least, to begin with. When the world shut down from the COVID-19 health pandemic, Bird was at home. And, physically isolated, he’s been trying to stay mentally sharp ever since. “I started doing these daily Instagram songs,” Bird says. “Just doing all this to stay sane. Just trying to give myself something to feel gratification about. The recordings were done at home and I’d send them to my bass player and he’d send them to my drummer. They sounded a lot better than they aught to!”





Tracklist:
01 - Andalucia
02 - Alabaster
03 - Greenwine
04 - Christmas in April
05 - Souvenirs
06 - Oh Holy Night
07 - Mille Cherubini in Coro
08 - Night's Falling
09 - Glad
10 - Christmas Is Coming
11 - White Christmas
12 - Skating
13 - Auld Lang Syne


Media Report:
Genre: chamber pop, indie-folk
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits