365 project, "some people wake up on Monday mornings/Barring maelstroms and red flare warnings/with no explosions and no surprises/perform a series of exercises"

177.

Artist: Andrew Bird
Album: Armchair Apocrypha

I am so up and down with this album. I have deleted it and re-uploaded it to itunes about 37 times…okay, maybe not 37, but its happened a few times. I listen to it, decide I don’t like it, delete it, and then hear one of the songs on TV or on the radio or something and decide I need to listen to it again.

I first heard Andrew Bird at bonnaroo back in 2006. I think. I really don’t remember what year it was. He seems to be a yearly staple at ‘roo. At any rate, Mandy had a friend that was hanging out with us on whatever day this was (this was the first year we went down, actually. He had to pick the lock on the lockbox for them because Mandy’s purse got stolen and it had the keys in it. Now ask me to remember what year was the first year we went down…) and he told us that we NEEDED to see this dude play, so since there was nothing else going on, we made the trek to Centeroo to check him out.

All I remember is Mandy’s friend telling us “this dude whistles and shit. He does everything on his own and he fucking whistles.” I know that I ended up liking the set after it was done, and was proud of myself for finding a new artist, but sometimes I think I would love anything anyone showed me at bonnaroo, as that is just the nature of the festival. This actually probably isn’t something that I should share, come to think of it, but whatever. Haha. How many of you will actually be down there with me next summer to force new things on me? Exactly.

Anyway, I don’t know why I initially fell out of love with this album, but it happened. I do believe that I just got tired of it, as it was one of the things that was stuck on my ipod during the bad years when I couldn’t do anything to upgrade/change/update anything on that bad boy. These days I still don’t love listening to the album, and as a matter of fact, kind of sighed and scuffed my feet when I realized it was time for this one, but I am on my second go-round with it, and I’m going to be honest with you, it isn’t terrible.

I guess I never really did think it was terrible, its just different from what I regularly listen to, so that makes it hard to swallow at some points. If I’m in a pop-punk mood or something, and this pops up on my play list, it is kind of a drag, you know?

I have the song Fiery Crash on my itunes more than once, which leads me to believe that I decided to keep that one around in at least a few of the delete sessions, and never realized it. My favorite song on the album, though, at least currently, is the song Scythian Empires. It’s a bit more upbeat than some of the other songs, I guess. I don’t know, really. It just has something hook-y about it that as of late has caught my attention.

Here, lets just cut to the chase: