You’re Tired, But Everyone’s Tired

Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire - Oh! the Grandeur

I don’t pretend to know elbow from asshole when it comes to jazz. It’s like red wine: I lack the palate and patience for an educated opinion on bouquets and textures and structures, but I sure as shit drink a lot of it.

I fell in love with it years ago when Django Reinhardt defeated a default impression I had of the genre, starring Kenny G and a synthesized wave machine, or whatever the fuck they do in smooth jazz these days. I usually avoid sounding so dramatic, but it changed things for me. I heard a music that I’ll always associate with the most beautiful noises we fecal-filth savages are capable of making. To hit such technically baffling notes, driven by the instinct of a single moment and with the balls to challenge what people expect to hear next is to make a case for music as high-art.

This album in particular (sort of a continuation of the picturesque, dreamy swirls of Reinhardt’s brand of gypsy swing) is one that I find myself turning to often. It’s Andrew Bird before he was really Andrew Bird—it’s a turn-of-the-century passion project from a guy who’s way too underrated for his violin playing and jazz vocals. Led by the percussion of blunt guitar chords and the light scratch of the jazz drumming I appreciate so much, Bird (surely a Charlie Parker reference here) coos his way through the verses and jumps into vicious and downright violent violin solos. His writing, both musically and in the amazing aesthetics of the words he chooses to drift through, is something that anyone with a soul must envy.

It’s something I like to put on when I’m drenched in that sort of comfortable longing that a warm night and the quiet hum of an unsettled mind often lends itself to. It’s in the intangible and inevitable existential falter of another night you’re not sure you’ve really taken advantage of. These songs take us through the mellifluous drawls of a truly irreplaceable sound that we once as a country birthed and crowned and killed—through a better time for music.

Put it on when you have nothing better to do than rest your head on a friendly lap and sway the night away. It may be all we need after all.

-Drew