Last night Andrew Bird played at the Berklee Performance Center to a full house. I caught the tail end of the opener, Joan as Policewoman, and agreed fully with something she said – it is great to hear music in a space built with good acoustics. The Berklee hall is oddly long and narrow, meaning a lot of the seats are far away from the stage, but the sound more than makes up for it.
Bird played most of the best songs from his fantastic new album, Armchair Apocrypha, including “Plasticities”, “Fiery Crash”, “Imitosis” and “Armchairs” among songs of previous albums. Each song sounded like a different version than what ended up on the album. More than just the changes for translating them to performing live, they were a completely alternate take. People had different reactions, but the crowd loved it and my vote was with the majority. Lastly, among his musical talents on the guitar, violin and glockenspiel, it was his spot on whistling that impressed me most. If whistling is a competition at the next Olympics, he should try to represent the U.S. of A.