Like a man possessed, Andrew Bird emits a scintillating sonic solo show for Benefit Braddock on 11/10/11.

By Chris Stokum

On a squat stage of battered wood, three amplifiers glow with the sanguine red of vacuum tubes. The twin flaring bells of a custom Specimen speaker horn, made-to-order by luthier Ian Schneller for just $12,000, arch from a platform behind the amps. Spread in front of them is a daunting sonic array: four mics, a vintage violin, a Gibson ES-339, and a xylophone, not to mention a sprawling set of pedals that loop, echo, reverb, delay, and, in short, transmute a single plucked note into a shimmering kaleidoscopic symphony. I say ‘daunting’ not because the collection is fundamentally excessive – a four-piece band could easily man the stations and have a spare member for hand-claps and cowbell – but rather because tonight, in the baroque theater of Braddock’s public library, Andrew Bird is performing solo.

Slight in frame and sharp in feature (his surname makes certain comparisons all-too apparent), Bird seems in danger of being crushed by the sound from the moment he begins playing. His songs start subtly, with a plucked melody a strummed progression on the violin. But he compulsively loops, so that within a few seconds the melody has a harmonic mate, and then another and another. Soon, six bowed phrases soar over the staccato foundation and Bird responds with a whistled strain, inhumanly pure and strong (and again, his surname suggests the obvious). A stomp-box sets the speaker horns turning, transforming the sound into a tumult of flux and oscillation, Dopplered waves pulsing over the audience and receding as the horns face front and swirl away.

Just as the noise flirts with utter chaos, Bird toe-taps a pedal, and the auditorium falls silent but for a gently strummed guitar. Tonight’s music lingers in the interstices between environmental ambient and steady folk. With Bird’s mumbled singing, I mishear the lyrics of his first song; the chorus of this rendition of the traditional spiritual “Jesus Is a Dying Bed Maker” strikes my ears as, “He’s my diamond maker” – a slip that nonetheless explains Bird’s role in tonight’s show. Gradually, the loops pressurize the room, forcing the notes closer together until it seems that even Bird himself, the originator of all of this, can no longer control the crystallization of sound. His periodic contributions become compounded, until he’s doubling whistled melodies on the violin, sung lines on the xylophone. The molecules of a diamond are covalently bonded, democratically sharing electrons between atoms, and Bird seems determined to give equal attention to the instruments surrounding him, to make use of their timbres any way he can. Even musical styles are compressed in this environment: echoes of Ennio Morricone and cabaret jazz are interpolated with classical musings and bluegrass twang.

Often, the sound seems to beyond Bird’s control. It reverberates around the ornate hall, repeating its own structure in infinite variations. At center stage, Bird sways and twitches, shakes his head and grimaces. By the end of the show, he is clearly exhausted and visibly relieved, as if recently exorcised. Whatever maker of diamonds possessed him tonight was surely not the Redeemer, though I would hesitate to call it a demon. I am not one for the romantic notion of artistic inspiration, but Bird seemed less a generator than a conduit, facilitating a complexity and luster far beyond his personal scope. Early in the show, at the conclusion of “Why?” – his security blanket, performed at every show – Bird wonders aloud why the song comforts him like it does given that it’s written from another’s perspective.

“Well,” he corrects himself. “I’m in there for a second. I have a brief cameo when I shrug my shoulders.”