& The Mysterious Production of Eggs by Andrew Bird
This is by no means my first experience with Andrew Bird; "A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left" had mysteriously slipped its way into my music library, and I was immediately swept away. But strangely, I never enjoyed & The Mysterious Production of Eggs, though I would credit that today to the terrible quality of the mp3s. They might as well have been live versions played underwater and recorded from a distant radio.
Listening to the album for the first time, it's immediately evident that this guy likes his words.
For the most part, the lyrics to the song are less about the meaning and more about the sound; "Fake Palindromes", for example, feature a bunch of lines that are meant to look like palindromes. "Sovay" is a word that supposedly has no meaning, simply a word that had come to Bird during songwriting that he liked.
But if you must look at the lyrics, it's almost a shock that these songs deal with death, psychoanalysis, references to Franz Kafka's The Metamorphasis and ride of the valkyries. With its hushed vocals, fluttery violins, acoustic guitars and whistling, these pop songs seem to speak of anything but "swapping blood with formaldehyde" or "getting set for my accidental suicide". Bird often sings to us, "you really should've died", and ends the album commanding us to sing him happy birthday "like it's going to be your last day".
Aside from the doom and gloom, the album really just feels effortless. It's more enjoyable than the subject matters are unsavory.
