Review: Andrew Bird at Chicago's Fourth Presbyterian Church

Unique sounds soar in spiritual setting

December 16, 2009|By Joshua Klein, SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE

Andrew Bird's particular, peculiar genius has been apparent from the get-go, but in the last couple of years he has pulled off perhaps the most impressive feat of all: expanding his following from a small cult to something closer to the mainstream. Making his strange and whimsical songs seem normal was no simple task, especially considering Bird's myriad eccentricities, but to his credit, no one could claim the guy didn't do it on his own terms.

Case in point: Bird ended his busy 2009 U.S. tour schedule not with a traditional hometown blowout, but with a sold-out four-night stand that began Monday at Fourth Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue. What's more, Bird envisioned the shows as intimate celebrations of gezelligheid (a Dutch word that translates roughly to "coziness"), leaving behind his band and his standard P.A. and instead embracing the majestic setting while dusting off some of his lesser-known compositions.

Admittedly, such a looming space was an oddly imposing setting for "cozy" winter woodshedding, but like any place of worship, it did imbue the performance with implicit spirituality, especially as Bird drew from the ether several melodies in search of songs, songs in search of lyrics, and songs in search of titles, each work-in-progress nearly constructed from scratch as he looped his violin, voice and guitar into beautiful and sometimes soaring soundscapes.

Bird broke up these instrumental experiments with the occasional familiar or fully realized composition too, songs such as "Section 8 City" and "Scythian Empires" as well as seldom-aired rarities such as "Carrion Suite."

Despite the dramatic cathedral-like setting, the acoustics of the 90-minute set ultimately weren't terribly different from a typical solo Bird set (though the muffled smooth jazz inadvertently beamed in from a nearby John Hancock Center antenna did add an element of unintentional humor to the proceedings).

In fact, it was really only when Bird emerged for an encore rendition of Bob Dylan's "Oh, Sister" and Charley Patton's "Some of These Days," performed with just a violin and a single microphone to bypass the broadcast interference, that the church's inimitable acoustics truly came to the fore.