Whistler, Suzuki-trained violinist, and all-around musical polymath Andrew Bird scored his biggest success so far with 2005's terrific The Mysterious Production Of Eggs, which introduced his offbeat, complex songwriting to a new audience. Shortly afterward, he found a simpatico partner in Minneapolis drummer and loop artist Martin Dosh, who joined Bird on tour and later brought him to Minnesota for the recording of Bird's follow-up album, the remarkable Armchair Apocrypha. Bird, on tour with Dosh and guitarist Jeremy Ylvisaker, recently spoke with The A.V. Club about the new album, the importance of improvising, and the drawbacks of the minor key.
The A.V. Club: How did you approach the recording of Armchair Apocrypha differently than Mysterious Production Of Eggs?
Andrew Bird: It was quite a bit different. I think the first song we recorded was "Plasticities," which Martin Dosh and I had just started playing together. That was one of the first songs where we were just experimenting with us both looping and combining our distinct universes with each other. We went into Third Ear [Studio] in Minneapolis and recorded basically what we do live, which is him building a loop on drums while I'm building a loop on violin—which is a risky way to go. You don't have as much control, but we thought, "This is working really well live, so let's just try it like we do it [on stage]." And it worked out really well.
There were a lot of things we couldn't fix because of the way we did it. But I've just learned that you never know which approach is going to work, so I try every possible one and see which one's the best. That can be a bit grueling and can take a while. But this one was a little more… I was determined to get more of the ecstasy that comes in a live show, and more of the zinging out that I do in a live show, the feverishness that comes over me onstage. It's really hard to get in that state of mind in an empty studio in a basement in Minneapolis in February. But we did everything we could to create that bigger sound. Eggs had an intimacy to the vocals which worked just fine for that record, but it's generally not an aesthetic that I'm a big fan of—that sound of a voice right in your ear, whispering quietly. It's just not the way I like to sing. That's the difference right there. And there's Dosh's input on stuff, his style of playing.
AVC: The electric guitar is more prominent on Armchair than it was on Eggs. It seems like the whole "rock" aspect has been kicked up a notch.
AB: I suppose you could say that. That's just the way things went. There's no electric guitar solos per se, but I played an old Jaguar guitar. That's just what felt the best, sounded the best. But there are earlier versions of "Heretics," for instance, that I did in Chicago that were just me on a parlor guitar. An old Gibson. Kind of old-timey, fingerstyle guitar versions. And then I ended up, two months later, going into [the studio] with Kevin O'Donnell, the drummer [on Eggs], and doing this raucous version of it. I had somewhat of a luxury of time where I could record a version and listen to it for two months, and if it still excites me and I feel like I captured something honest, then I keep it.
AVC: Did you have a conscious direction you wanted the music to go, or do you let things evolve as they will and just go with what seems right?
AB: A little bit of both. I have a know-it-when-you-hear-it approach to things, and I know so much what I don't want to hear, so a lot of stuff ends up on the cutting-room floor. But going into this record, I did have a conscious desire to really stretch out some of the melodies and vocalize, instead of having sort of a dense rambling of lyrics. To stretch things out but not have it feel sleepy. So there's a longer arc to a lot of phrases—"Dark Matter" or "Armchair Apocrypha" are probably the best examples of that. Trying to create a beam of sound with your voice, that was a conscious goal.
AVC: When The A.V. Club interviewed you about a year ago, you were just beginning to work on the songs that ended up on Armchair Apocrypha. You mentioned that you'd started working on a song about the ancient Scythians, which became "Scythian Empires," and said that it didn't really follow your usual songwriting process—you had been reading a history book and were looking for a way to getting a song idea from left field. How did the song evolve after that?
AB: I started the first half of it when I was on this long, grueling tour through France, and not feeling particularly optimistic. Like to the point where it was humorous to me how shitty things were and how shitty I felt. [Quotes opening line of the song:] "Five-day forecast brings black-tar rains and hellfire." Usually, I'll take some feeling I have and amplify it a little, to the point where it's potentially funny. And then, the music that I write is often not necessarily full of doom and gloom. You'll notice in most of the darkest songs, the music is actually pretty peaceful and lulling. But we were driving all over Normandy at the time, and I was thinking about how much the earth had been trod upon. You know the history. The earth almost looks like it's packed down and dense from so many feet treading over it. And I guess then the song leaps back in time to the Russian steppes.
A lot of [my] songs have a big leap, like there's two strains going on. In this case, it's my current state of mind, and then the mind completely wanders to a whole different universe, and I see how one might have something to say about the other. I was imagining this real-estate agent out on the Russian steppes. [Quoting lyrics:] "Offering views of exiting empires, such breathtaking views of Scythian empires." I've always been fascinated by these obscure corners of history. I sit there and look at maps of the ancient world, where there's so many of these fantastical names, tribes that you know nothing about. The Visigoths, the Gauls. And of course, the Huns. And they're always at the edges of the empires—they're shown as an arrow piercing into this empire. When I was in eighth grade, I got particularly fascinated by the Scythian empire, because they were a little bit lesser-known. And that became my thing. My identity in eighth grade was connected to the Scythians. So I resurrected them through this song.
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