Armchair Apocrypha : Andrew Bird : Review : Rolling Stone

Over his twelve-year career, vaguely retro vagabond Andrew Bird has been a hard guy to pin down, performing with everyone from Squirrel Nut Zippers and Candi Staton to Ani DiFranco and My Morning Jacket. On his seventh album, seemingly simple elements -- plucked violin, shuffling snare drums, chiming guitars, plinky piano, his spooky croon and magisterial whistle -- build into one heady, slippery whole. His lyrics mix the everyday and the catastrophic, lulling you into a false sense of security. On the opening track, "Fiery Crash," mundane airport imagery -- "Turnstiles on mezzanine/Jetways and Dramamine fiends" -- turns into terror: "A fatal premonition/You know you got to envision/The fiery crash." The effect can be both cozy and traumatic -- maybe Bird should have called this "Armchair Apocalypse."