Hallock Hill

Andrew Bird, “Souverian, ” Noble Beast (Fat Possum Records, 2009)

There are times when there seems to be very little beauty in the world, and even less an acknowledgment of what beauty there is.  It is only is isolate flecks that the world has any truth, generates some shard of meaning—not in grand ideas, grandiose themes, grandiloquent statements. In these discrete shards comes some other thing, a thing that because of its simple power, cannot be transcribed.

We buy things, we own them, have them, possess them, move them from one place to another, sometimes minimally—say from one side of a shelf to another. It all is in the “grand scheme of things” of course pointless. But none of us lives in the grand scheme of things, we live in our little houses and ride to work in our little cars and eat our little meals and sleep in our little beds and play with our little children and wash our little dishes and put away our little clean clothes and read our little books and listen to our little music. These things we have have us as much, if they are any good. Not many things are, some things not all all, some very much so. Then there are the things that are great and that truly do have us rather than the other way round. We call them our favorite things and we hold on to them. Our favorite shards. Our most prized isolate flecks.

Sometimes I, for one, have things a while before I do anything with them. I’ll own a book for three years before reading it. I will own a record for months before putting it on. I don’t know why.

This is to say that today finally I listened to Andrew Bird’s new Noble Beast and for the first time in a long time found one of those isolate flecks reflect some of the light in my eyes, and it moved me. It is not a “challenging” record, not “earth shattering.” It is what most things are not: beautiful. And for that we should be assured and thankful. It is not an album of songs so much as an emotion carried through nearly an hour, and as with all emotions it changes subtly over time and while one doesn’t know fully what it “means” one can certainly respond to how it “feels.” Writing about art is like painting about carpentry, to paraphrase someone, and Bird’s art has achieved something new here, that he has not revealed before—it is a pure place of spirit meeting body. You see, sound is invisible but it also moves solids. Its invisibility can tumble the walls and bounce the heart. Don’t take my “words” for it. Go buy this record. Put it in your house for a while. Move it around from place to place as is your want. And when the time is right, listen to it properly and it will care for you.