crazybobbles

Last night I wrote on my twitter “mmm biblical gigs with sexy birds”. I meant exactly just that as I was watching Andrew Bird and Wood Pigeon play at a church. For those of you who don’t know Andrew Bird, he’s an american singer songwriter, he uses a wide variety of musical instruments including guitar, violin and the lost arts of whistling, strangely I describe him as Regina Spektor with a penis (and no boobies) and lots of loop machines (oh and a violin), though a better comparison would be Sufjan Stevens or M. Ward. Last night he played a very intimate gig at the lovely St Giles in the Fields church (where Emiliana Torinni played). The acoustic of these gigs are always remarkable so it was definitely a gig to see (it was sold out for two dates). Fortunately this entry will be a short one because not too much happened tonight.

I’ve managed to book a nice holiday for today (Friday) since I was meeting up with a few friends for MEAT before heading off to see Sigur Ros (too lazy to do accents I’m afraid). This essentially meant an early start to the weekend (woot!) so after a pretty fun day at work I dashed out to see Andrew Bird. I left as soon as possible since I knew the church was all about having nice seats (mmm pews) at the front. I arrived there pretty early (about 30 minutes to spare) and spoke to the people around there for a bit (they were trying to buy / sell tickets, normal fans mind, not touts). I then met up with Anika who managed to walk her way to the venue (Anika likes walking it’s cheaper but then a lot of “walking maths” is required (eg walking back and food consumption)).

The doors eventually opened and we handed in our tickets to get in, they initially wanted to take my ticket but I managed to persuade them that usually ripping out the stub is enough to say that a ticket has been used (rather then taking my entire ticking and making me come back after the gig to pick up a random one (which they did after me and Anika managed to keep our tickets)). The venue was dark (saving on electricity I guess) but nonetheless biblical, we managed to get the best front row seats in da house (well church but whatever) and did some conversing before Wood pigeon (the support band) came on.

They (well he, only the singer Mark Hamilton and his friend came on stage so it was a solo set) were awesome, their sound was relaxing and soulful, it was perfect for church venues. Quite a few tracks used loop machines which was fun. At one point he got his friend to come up and play Ukelele which was cute. Anika had already seen Wood pigeon play quite recently and actually met up with Mark, so after the gig she met up with Mark again and made him draw on her awesome sketch book (initially she got scared that he might forget to give her the book hehe).

During the interval we would constantly get people coming up to the second row (we were first) and asking the people if they could sit in the empty pew. The people there would then say “noo because we already have 4 people waiting so it’s full”. I think they were quite easily branded as evil (and it’s a church for crying out loud) for the entire gig because clearly you could fit more people in the pew and they were assuming that four was the limit of the pew. I kinda hate the idea of reserving seats for a mass number of people, you could essentially say “sorry, this church is TAKEN!” and not have anyone take a seat. Why people can’t turn up to a gig on time is beyond me (lazy fuckers).

Anyway, Andrew Bird eventually comes on and says hi and plays Master sigh in C (a new track?). I’ve never seen him play live so I didn’t know what I was going to get, turns out one man can do quite a lot of stuff if you have not one, but three loop machines at your disposal. The looping were very seemless and gave the music a nice build up. His voice and the sounds of the violins and guitars filled the ever so biblical air (though it stank of old church) with blissful music you could take your shoes off, lie down and listen to (which some people did, i personally took my shoes off ). I knew playing an entire track with just a loop machine was quite a challenge (all about timing and remembering which loop is which etc) so I have no idea how he manages to get 3 going on.

Here’s a video of Andrew Bird playing Plasticities, I have another song too but will probably upload that when I get back from Sigur Ros (eurgh back to playing catch up mode!):

The setlist was pretty fresh. Quite a lot of new songs were played and Andrew only played a few tracks from Fingerlings and Armchair Apochrypha. At one point his green scarf got caught on the machine head of the guitar and all you could see was the green scarf hanging on the violin that trailed back to his violin case hehe, I’m not even sure whether that was on purpose or not, muscians are far too random to predict these days. He “ended” with Scythian Empire and the crowd went crazy, demanding an encore, funny thing about it was that I was able to peer in the “backstage” area where Andrew stood their on his own, shaking himself off for an encore, I’ve always wondered what you do during these breaks, do you high five everyone? or just stand around, it also made me wonder about whether they have a quick toilet break during the encore session (I have an article in mind for gig ponderings so stay tuned for that). But yeah, he eventually came out and finished it with two more tracks, one being a Bob Dylan cover of “Oh sister” which he dedicated to someone’s birthday.

After the gig he came back to the stage and signed a few things. I quickly swiped the setlist and got that signed (love gigs where they only have ONE setlist). Anyway, as always, i hope you enjoy the photos, comments and whatnot are always mucho appreciato. Right I best be off before Inn tells me off for being late (I’m SO going to be late)