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Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs
Andrew Bird
Retail Price (not our price): $16.98
Release Date: 2005-02-08
Manufacturer: Righteous Babe
Format: Audio CD
Discs: 1

Track List
Now here, for your listening pleasure, the tracks...

Disc 1

Editorial Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):

1) Amazon.com
His beginnings as a violinist long behind him, Chicago-born Andrew Bird has been sculpting ever more complex and convincing musical worlds since his first album in 1997. On his fifth release, Bird offers up no answers to the mysteries in the world around us, but does take on the thornier elements with poetic verve. The instrumentation is bracingly inventive, but never for mere shenanigans or showmanship. The songs are each a perfectly formed vignette. And he's a world class whistler; not the loud summoning blast, but the supple and nuanced vibrato-laced melodicism of a master. There is no shortage of utterly riveting songs here. They work their magic on their own believable terms, without a hint of cloying nostalgia or riff-fueled seduction. - David Greenberger

2) Album Description
Andrew Bird is a previously unimaginable combination of songwriter, violinist, guitarist, vocalist and whistler. His unfailingly unique and striking music has been dumbfounding us for years. Bird's first studio album in nearly two years, The Mysterious Production of Eggs, is his second on Righteous Babe Records. The album follows Weather Systems, his critically-acclaimed mini-LP, released in spring 2003. The recording sessions for Mysterious Production saw Bird scrap the album three times and travel between studios in Chicago, Los Angeles and his own home studio on a farm in Northern Illinois. The album took final shape with the production help of David Boucher, whose credits include Paul Westerberg, Lisa Loeb, and Randy Newman. Bird plays most of the instruments on Mysterious Production, and is joined by a handful of special guests complimenting his already lush sonic palette. The results are magnificent, a powerhouse of a record dealing with nothing less than the mysteries of childhood, creativity and modern science - epic in scope and minute in detail. Equally impressive is Bird's solo live show at which, with the aid of a sampling pedal, the songwriter takes his often dense, orchestrated recordings and rewrites them anew each night, adding hypnotic layers of instruments to his vocals and other-worldly whistling - you have to see it to believe it.

Customer Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):
Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5

1) one of my all-time faves   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
This CD blew my socks off. It is one of my top five of all time, hands down.

2) Playful and rich   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
This album really comes alive with repeat listens. Look up "Sovay" and you'll find that it refers to "traditional English folk song about a young woman who dresses as a highwayman in order to test her lover" (Wikipedia). Re-listening to the song in that context gives it another layer, but the richness and layers aren't needed to appreciate the gentle vocals, lilting whistling and healthy doses of violin. Track 3 ("A Nervous Tic...") is catchy enough that you'll find yourself whistling along. The rhymes (six rhymes in three lines, all matching "swapping your blood with formaldehyde" in "Fake Palindromes") and metaphor ("so we're taking all our myths to the bank") will keep bringing you back if the lush instrumentation doesn't.Like this album? Try listening to the Kings of Convenience--they're mellower but worthwhile.

3) Such smart music it makes feel lesser.   [Rating: 4 out of 5]
This album holds such diverse music! It varies from the upbeat sound of "Fake Palindromes" to the slower sound of "Master Fade". I randomly ran across this album at Best Buy and bought it based on the album art. It looked interesting enough and I was right. This album has been very good to me over the years.

4) intricate and satisfying   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
This is an album worth listening to just for the beautiful carefully-orchestrated melodies, and also an album worth just reading for its poetry.The instrumentation is delicate, layered, modest and surprising. Whistling solos suddenly soar out from the vibes/violin/keyboard/guitar harmonies. Bird playfully juxtaposes folk, orchestrated pop, 60s beat poetry, gypsy rock, jazz. The lyrics are unexpectedly clever, yet sung gently and offhandedly. Bird's themes tend to be a bit apocalyptic. He gently and gracefully describes how we'll be blown back the 70s (by "the whole board of trustees, all those Don Quixotes") in Sovay, how we destroy ourselves with self-conscious neuroses in Measuring Cups, and what the end of the world will be like in Opposite Day. In Fake Palindromes he gravitates to more of a stream-of-consciousness style, which is brilliantly continued in the interlude at the end of Opposite Day. He throws in a tidbit of gospel in the ending of Masterfade when he sings "when you're lying on the ground / staring up at that inverted compass / I mean Christ who Knows?"Andrew Bird brings together disparate strands of inspiration from unlikely sources across genres, and the result is uniquely moving. How he is able to so gracefully pull this off is a mystery. One thing we do know though, is that at the end of the world, there will be snacks.

5) Delights at every turn   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
It's such a pleasure listening to an album unfold, and to an artist gracefully inventing his own idiom. These songs have an unassuming beauty that makes most pop music (including that of artists I genuinely like) seem cliched or overbearing. The musical variety here does not undo the coherence of Bird's sound. A stunning CD. I will make a point to hear him live.