I had never seen a show at the Orpheum Theater in Boston. It’s one of those big venues with assigned seating that has never really piqued my interest; however, after seeing Andrew Bird with Loney, Dear at the Orpheum, I’m glad I finally got a chance to experience it. The interior surprised me as it was a lot smaller and more intimate than I was expecting and while having a lavish treatment of ornate moldings and architecture, ceiling murals and drapes, its lackluster upkeep over the years lent it an overall feeling and smell similar to those old roller rinks with carpets on the wall and hotel rooms by the highway. Suffice it to say, Orpheum had a lot of damn character and excluding the terribly uncomfortable chairs, it was a rather charming venue.
Swedish band Loney, Dear took the stage first, playing a tight set of upbeat pop that the audience reacted strongly to. Lead singer, Emil Svanängen, performed with a shy posture and unflinchingly frail voice that was at its most mesmerizing during the highest of falsettos. I was impressed that as the opening act, he had no problem concluding the final minute of the song “Saturday Waits” with just his voice. It was one of those vulnerable moments that really let you connect with the artist.
Despite his withdrawn demeanor, Emil was quite comfortable interacting with the audience and at one point taught us how to sing along to one of his songs. Of course being this was Boston, proud home of the cranky “Masshole” driver, the audience was hardly receiving. Overall, it was a surprisingly good performance that got the audience ready for Andrew Bird.
To be honest, I was not nearly as excited for this Andrew Bird show as I should have been. The first time I witnessed Mr. Bird perform was at a sold-out Berklee Performance Center show and he was the mad architect of the most dense helping of musical magic that I have ever experienced. The stage looked curiously like a set from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and within minutes, the tall, reed-like Bird had slipped off his shoes and was assuming what I call the “flamingo pose,” or one foot resting on the knee of the other leg. It was an iconic moment from a wonderful concert experience that would become the focal point of how his live shows would be remembered: the flamingo pose, exposed socks, and Mr. Bird vehemently consulting his violin while his guitar clung to his back like a toddler riding its parent. I suppose such awesome imagery would set an unfair standard for future performances because when I saw him last year at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, I was stunned to see that he was using a full band.
Now for anyone else playing with a band would be reasonable, expected, but for Bird, whose magic had much to do with the fact that he was a singular and masterful being of looping precision, it appeared almost like a betrayal. I know, it’s harsh and I tried to keep an open mind, but it just wasn’t the same. That initial performance was so intriguing because, yeah, I didn’t know what to expect, but mostly because he was this quirky one-man-band, constructing elaborate songs in front of us with a looping device. Whistling into a mic here, strumming a few chords there, and then quickly plucking on his violin, slowly and deliberately the songs came to life right in front of our eyes and we got to relish the entire process.
Last year’s performance at the Zoo in Seattle wasn’t terrible but it was somewhat disappointing to a fan with a perhaps unfair standard of Bird musicianship. The songs were the same at heart but they were played with a different approach, a different perspective, which might have been more palpable if it weren’t so obvious that the newly formed band had yet to sync with one another. I would later come to discover that Mr. Bird does not believe in “band practice.” Instead he and his band like to play extra shows at smaller venues to exercise their technique and timing, a noble idea, but how well would it pay off?
My expectations were downsized to a more reasonable level for this show at the Orpheum and, at the very least, I was excited to note how far along the band had come in the time since. The stage was set up in that familiar fashion, like we were peering in to some delicate scene in a diorama. Large Victrola parts dominated the stage, including the double-headed menace that spun at Bird’s request, twisting and distorting the air adding a surreal element to the music. He approached the stage; sock monkey in hand, placed his stuffed friend on one of the amps to offer its quiet moral support, and then quickly kicked off his shoes revealing the wonderful hot pink socks hiding underneath. This simple act drew considerable applause and someone in the audience screamed, “I like your socks!”
He started the set solo, playing a short and beautiful instrumental. It was during this opening solo song when something unexpected happened: the audience was serendipitously snatched up and recorded into one of his loops. Our applause was bounced back out at us intermittently every few seconds in an intriguing way that made Bird pause and say, “Wow, that actually sounds pretty cool.”
Now Bird is by no means a chatty stage performer, but he is really comfortable in his element on-stage; it shows with the sock monkey and the hot pink socks, but it also shows in the way he interacts with the audience members. He performs with a nervous energy that makes his limbs somewhat jerky and unpredictable. When caught up in the rapture of his music, he begins to pantomime with his body and at any one moment he can be seen picking things out of the air, putting things in his pocket, chastising the audience, or begging for forgiveness.
When the band appeared to accompany him on-stage, I was pleasantly surprised. There was definitely still room to grow, but they had improved by bounds in the overall tightness of their performance. They were still mostly nervous and stiff, shooting each other occasional unsure glances, but there was an overall cohesiveness that wasn’t there before. Despite the fact that they made a noticeable number of mistakes (it took three attempts to get “Imitosis” just right), his endearing stage presence prevented it from becoming a tragedy and instead turned it into a humorous entertainment.
As expected, the bulk of the songs were from his most recent album, Noble Beast, an album that I haven’t fully familiarized myself with yet.  He did, however, play a few cherished songs from previous albums like “Imitosis”, “Plasticites,” and “Tables and Chairs”. The encore consisted of “Fake Palindromes” and a stunning reinvention of one of his older songs, “Why?”, which is a jazzy and spontaneous number in which he acts out, as if in a conversation. It was in this song’s performance where Mr. Bird was at his most animated. The improvisational violin bursts reminded us that he is an exceptionally gifted musician, and helped make “Why?” the highlight of the show.
During his Orpheum performance I kept wondering to myself, “Why would he choose to switch formats? What’s his motivation?” It was something I had been pondering objectively since that last show in Seattle, something that he answered indirectly while addressing the crowd before a song. He was asking us to sing along with him for his next song and, for a brief moment, he revealed slight fatigue and said, “You know, I sing the chorus, I play all the instruments….sometimes I just want to play guitar and sing.”
The Andrew Bird show at the Orpheum was fairly amazing and while my preference will always be for the one-man-band Andrew Bird, the important thing is that he was having a blast and subsequently the crowd was having one, too. After reinventing one of his older and more conservative songs into a full-band musical street riot, he addressed the audience, somewhat short on breath, and proclaimed, “Well, that was a hoot. I love music.”
Set List:
Instrumental Solo
Natural Disaster
Masterswarm
Effigy
Oh No
Plasticites
The Privateers
Not A Robot, But a Ghost
Tenuousness
Fitz and the Dizzy Spells
Imitosis
Anonanimal
Souvarian
Tables And Chairs
\\
Why?
Fake Palindromes
Andrew Bird: website | myspace | Noble Beast review | @ virgin mobile festival 2008
Loney, Dear: website | myspace |Â Dear John review
Words and Artwork by: Jeff Chenette
Photo 1: Brian Farinas
Photos 2 & 3: Cameron Wittig
