Eggs?
Posted by Administrator | Under Music Thursday Aug 11, 2005My friend, Mark, exuberantly recommended an album to me. I tend to regard Mark’s recommendations very highly. He has introduced me to artists such as Dog’s Eye View, Martin Sexton, Live and Dave Matthews Band. Sorry for the lack of links to those artists; but here’s one for you: Google.
This time, Mark recommended an album titled The Mysterious Production of Eggs by Andrew Bird. I purchased the album from the iTunes Music Store that day at work and schlepped it home on my USB memory gizmo. Now, a couple of months later, I finally burned it to CD and listened to it on the way into work this morning. Yes, my commute is long enough to digest a whole album.
As I listened, I started to try to place the music. It sounded like Rufus Wainwright, the group James and, in some places, Paul Simon. Then I started to think: why do I try to place music from artists that are new to me somewhere in my musical comfort zone? Do other people do this? (Feel free to leave comments). Is this being fair to the new artist? Or to the artists already in my comfort zone? Do I do this with other things? New flavors of ice cream? “This new Edy’s Triple Fudge Mocha Nut Blast tastes like Baskin Robbins’ Mocha Almond Fudge mixed with Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey.”
My initial impression of the album is that it’s excellent and I’ll listen to it quite a bit. It’s going to take that much just to fathom all of the lyrics. I swear I heard him say something about tying a girl up and drilling a hole in her head. Eggs is lyrically rich and the instrumentation is a bit eccentric. Somewhat “Wall of Sound”ish. I’ll post more about this album after I’ve listened to it a few more times.
