Photo by Gage Grove 91
After seeing Andrew Bird’s Lollapalooza performance last night, I feel more than comfortable saying the Chicago native aptly defines the term multi-instrumentalist. In several different songs during this show, he would play all of the following in each song: guitar, violin, xylophone, whistling, and singing. This man not only knows how to play adeptly, but is a fantastic songwriter with a great feel for dynamics within his musical style.
The Chicago native, playing in front of a hometown crowd, ran through a combination of new songs off their most recent album, Noble Beast, as well as some of his older fan favorites. The group kicked off their set with “Fiery Crash”, before settling into an array of songs from Noble Beast which comprised the majority of the first part of the performance, including “Fitz and Dizzyspells”, “Oh No”, “Effigy”, and “Not a Robot”. The band moved through this portion with particularly tight playing, exhibiting their workmanlike attitude that has come from touring with these songs night in and night out since the beginning of the year. While these songs displayed remarkable consistency, the band also performed them as if they were running through them en route to something bigger to come.
Photo by Gage Grove 91
Andrew Bird made one comment in between songs, promising that there would be “snacks” at some point during his time on stage. As the group proceeded to move away from their work on Noble Beast, the “snacks” came in abundance. They played a riveting collection of songs, mostly from their 2005 album Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs and their 2007 release Armchair Apocrypha. The band first transitioned to more recent songs such as the indie-pop of “Imitosis” and the beautiful dynamic of “Scythian Empires”. These songs were followed by Andrew Bird classics including “Measuring Cups”, “Tables and Chairs”, and “Fake Palindromes”. These older songs delivered the “snacks” alluded to by Andrew Bird earlier in the show. As the show concluded and dusk settled over Grant Park, the audience seemed more than satisfied with the performance they had witnessed as they moved on to watch Friday’s headliners.
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