Andrew Bird — The Mysterious Production Of Eggs

On Andrew Bird’s last disc, Bowl Of Fire, the songwriter couldn’t help but genre hop. With his latest effort, The Mysterious Production Of Eggs, he settles down and focuses his exceptional violin skills on the status quo, instead of 1950’s neo-crooner ballads, we get beat production and digital accents. "Tables And Chairs," his rousing appeal for utopia, is a perfect example of his new-but-familiar birdcall. He downplays the violin, opting to pluck the strings just as often as he bows them. The result is an album that occasionally sounds like a ticking clock — precise, meditative, absolutely necessary and thoroughly inescapable.

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