Brendan Benson & Luxury Wafers posted a few live sessions that have good bite. To quote LW, "Deceptively simplistic, the melodic structure and meter of Benson's songs ply their way deep as the nursery rhymes we all know by heart."
For me, I grew up surrounded by the Old 97's. It was the polar magnet's other side of the P.O.S. country that flooded North Texas. Benson has the same quality Miller does: simple songs doused in good melodies with no complications. Sort of the opposite of The Antlers, or less worrisome (but just as broken) than Rhett Miller.
What do you think of Andrew Bird? Want to have a discussion? I've heard interesting arguments on both sides. He's a virtuoso; he's pretentious. He's intellectual; he's convoluted. His newest album, Noble Beast, gathered reviews from both sides:
Pitchfork said this: "The sound of the album is as important as the notes Bird plays, and this extends to the lyrics, where he's gradually gone from word-play to syllable-play, often choosing lines for their sounds and tonal quality more than for their meaning."
Paste said this: "Bird’s cutback in musical drama inadvertently begs for a sharper focus on individual parts, including the lyrics, their grandiosity making up for the music’s lack thereof—and then some. But listen too hard, and his words turn into flashing lights."
So there's two conflicting opinions on the subject of Andrew Bird's writing. I think Andrew Bird is a good musician to spur a few questions: Do people care about writing in music? Or more specifically, are people comfortable with only ONE type of writing? There's poetry in some songwriters, and some are more straight forward. Brendan Benson's new song "Garbage Day" has strong, fun, straight-as-nails lyrics:
"Alone in my apartment / lights out / I'm in the dark again.../If she throws her heart away / I'll be there on garbage day / to sift through what's left I guess"
"...retching pennies in a boiling well / in a dream that it once becomes a foundry of mute and heavy bells / They shake me deaf and dumb"
Boiling water and hurling pennies...it's surrealism and Dream Psychology in one minimalistic song (Middle Cyclone). Beautiful. Two songwriters, two different kinds of music in the same spectrum - but each is good. Is one more "approachable" than the other? Is one "better" than the other? Maybe; I don't think there is a "better."
Andrew Bird likes to experiment with words and syllables. If he didn't, his lyrics would be vexing and exciting at the same time. I think it's weird to narrow, whittle the spectrum of songwriting down so sharply that every line has to be the next Top Ten Indie Hit. Sometimes music can just be music to our ears, and that's one thing Andrew Bird does well:
"flailing fetal fleas / feeding from the arms of the master /burrow into me /and this is sure to misspell disaster / Oh and the young in the larval stage / orchestrating plays / in vestments of translucent alabaster"
"Vestments of translucent alabaster" fits like a puzzle piece into the song, but what does it mean? It's beautiful, that's a definite. Isn't that all it needs to be - part of a "song" - a lyrical work? Not every song has to tell a story. Not every song has to have a beginning, middle, and end. Sometimes it can just be playful and be the higher aspects of improvisational music. Isn't that "jazz"?
