SISYPHUS ANDREW BIRD HOW TO

The flip is as clear as Bird’s shrug when he repeats over and over, “We’re all just stumbling down / Through an unnamed struggling town.”īird knows how to deploy specificity so suddenly and casually that it tickles-and then how to complicate that reaction. “Don the Struggle” actually brings back the 7/8 dance breakdown, but this time to serve as a foil to the song’s “Benny and the Jets” stomp. After a string of releases that sometimes felt like hearing Bird think himself in circles, the philosophy professor drops the chalk mid-proof, turns to the class, and cheerily concludes, “We’re all screwed!”Įven those who tend to tune out lyrics can recognize a reinstated directness in Bird’s composing, whether in the ambush of violins on“Manifest”, the straighforwardly beautiful ballad “Cracking Codes,” or the unrestrained “OH”s that hoist up “Olympians.” There are a few filler moments that would fit on any other Bird album-”Fallorun” in particular falls flat-but the rest feel like they share a common attitude of “Why not?”. It sounds eerily informed by “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” right down to its undermining of doom with whistling: “The Earth spins faster, whistles right past ya / Whispers death in your ear / Don’t pretend you can’t hear,” Bird casually drops on “Manifest,” just before offering another of his signature whistling solos. While its cover art depicts Bird swapped into Jacques-Louis David’s “ The Death of Marat,” its music is more Monty Python’s Life of Brian: consumed with human history and equally ready to poke fun at it. That irreverent, contentedly existential side of Bird makes a pleasantly surprising return on My Finest Work Yet, his most plainly and darkly funny album in a long time.

Sisyphus andrew bird