Brilliance and beauty from Bird

June 22, 2009|Joan Anderman, Globe Staff

Andrew Bird had a dream about flipping through a French cookbook and finding a recipe for sweetbreads, so he wrote a song about the implications of eating brains. Because Bird is a poet and a science geek and an elegant tunesmith, out came the beautiful and horrifying number that kicked off his concert in Boston Friday.

“I could taste what you were thinking/ That’s the taste of neurons blinking,’’ he sang, peppering his observations with otherworldly whistling and washes of lush, looped violin. For a growing slice of the alt-pop nation, Bird is the total package: a conservatory-trained musician with a slurry croon, a gentle soul, skewed, literate wit, and Beatlesesque mastery of melody. He’s become so deft with his looping machines he might have performed the entire two-hour set on his own. In fact Bird, who for all his gifts isn’t inclined to grandstand, offered just one solo marvel: sinuous, treacherous “Why?’’ where he strummed the vamp and plucked the heartstrings, layering parts like stacking vertebrae until he had built the spine of a song.

The rest of the time Bird (who also played guitar and xylophone) was accompanied by a three-piece band that included the terrific drummer and electronic musician Martin Dosh, as well as his stellar opening act, the Southwestern band Calexico, whose members swelled the onstage ranks to 11 and turned the meditative (“Scythian Empires’’) and the lilting (“Tables and Chairs’’) into “jamborees.’’

That last word came from Bird, a soft-spoken man whose introductions were short but illuminating. For example, before he played “Oh No’’ and “Effigy’’: “The next two songs are about antisocial tendencies. They used to be the same song.’’ It’s easy to imagine him in his rural Illinois laboratory - OK, it’s a farm - unraveling themes and dissecting moods, emerging pale and scrawny into the blinding daylight with a jubilant pop-rocker and a country shuffle in his arms.

They’re both on “Noble Beast,’’ Bird’s fifth and newest album, a sublime disc that puts the meticulous loner in touch with his fondness for grandeur. From time to time during the show, on a blissed-out tune like “Fitz and the Dizzyspells’’ or impossibly intricate “Anonanimal,’’ Bird would swing his bow or his mallet in figure eights above his head, pulling the pieces together like a brilliant, wayward conductor.

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.

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