Andrew Bird

Lately I've been going on an Andrew Bird bender. I've liked his music for a while. The first time I heard his work was on headphones while hiking up to the top of Mt Tabor in portland. At the time it just came up on shuffle play and I thought that it was from the 1920s, early jazz/swing.

Soon after, I put "Opposite Day" on a mix for Christine and "A nervous tic motion of the head to the left". "Glass figurine" was the first song on our wedding album (right before Billie Holiday's "I'll never smile again").

One thing I especially like is that it's easy to hear his voice just as an another instrument. If you focus on the lyrics they're also ambiguous so they have almost any meaning you want. Music like that can have a more profound impact on your being than something with a ham-fisted message or trying to build up the artist's brand/identity. For example, I didn't know what he looked like for years until I found one of his live performances on youtube. Woody McBride was probably my favorite artist throughout most of college (1993-96ish) and I'm still not totally sure what he looks like. Some artists (e.g. Mike Banks) refuse to be photographed on principle. I suppose the same should probably go for science - my first advisor told me "when journals will publish your bad articles (because of your fame), it's time to switch fields".