180g Double Gatefold! Includes Limited Time mp3 Download of the Entire Album!
Andrew Bird's 2012 breakthrough album, Break It Yourself, contains the single "Eyeoneye".
Tip for Andrew Bird fans hearing Break It Yourself for the first time: Clear away any and all distractions, listen on headphones and let its subtle charms sink in slowly. Early mornings or late nights work best. This isn't a record for chaotic commutes or busy offices these are songs of quiet contemplation, performed by a classically trained artist who sounds unmistakably confident in his craft, yet more muted than usual.
Cumulatively, when employed as background noise, Break It Yourself can seem uneventful, even sleepy. But listen closely to lustrous, uncommonly delicate ballads like "Sifters" and the eight-minute "Hole in the Ocean Floor," and the washed-out colors start to shine. Coming from an artist who's become a model of sunny consistency over the course of a dozen albums with a zillion fans who've only grown more intense in recent years Break It Yourself is a quiet, careful grower. Give it time, though, and it blooms into something beautiful.
"Over a nearly 20-year career, Chicago singer, songwriter and violinist Andrew Bird has built a rep as one of indie rock's most beguiling light touches - a dude who makes Jeff Tweedy look like a Nordic death-metal pyro. Fusing elements of jazz, Celtic folk and chamber pop while softly talk-singing - or whistling - tunes with titles like "Scythian Empires", he might be gratingly pretentious, if he wasn't so unobtrusively amiable. But on his ninth album, Bird gets direct, even confrontational. 'Desperation Breeds...' sets the tone, opening the record with a dark blast of piano-guitar discord... The emotional urgency energizes his fluid multi-instrumental elocution and learned metaphors; sometimes it sounds like he's burning an effigy of his ex in the quad at iTunes U: On "Give It Away," he evokes "worthless currency" over a gently plucked violin, analogizing inflation and failure like the Ron Paul of love. Whether contemplatively highbrow (the symphonic meditation "Hole in the Ocean Floor") or forlornly down-to-earth (the alt-country of "Fatal Shore"), his angst studies feel cathartic without seeming mean-spirited; when healing marimbas and crickets materialize for the album-ending instrumental lullaby, "Belles," it's a welcome exhaling moment. He's earned his rest." - rollingstone.com, Jon Dolan, March 2012
"Andrew Bird is one of the most distinctive & creative songwriters today" - New York Times
"[Bird] is a prodigious multi-instrumentalist [and] a lyricist of obscure and subtle wit." - Vanity Fair
"There are few stranger, magical creatures in the indie rock world than Andrew Bird." - Associated Press
Features:
180g Vinyl
Double LP
Gatefold jacket
Selections:
1. Desperation Breeds...
2. Polynation
3. Danse Caribe
4. Give It Away
5. Eyeoneye
6. Lazy Projector
7. Near Death Experience Experience
8. Behind the Barn
9. Lusitania
10. Orpheo Looks Back
11. Sifters
12. Fatal Shore
13. Hole in the Ocean
14. Belles
Andrew Bird's 2012 breakthrough album, Break It Yourself, contains the single "Eyeoneye".
Tip for Andrew Bird fans hearing Break It Yourself for the first time: Clear away any and all distractions, listen on headphones and let its subtle charms sink in slowly. Early mornings or late nights work best. This isn't a record for chaotic commutes or busy offices these are songs of quiet contemplation, performed by a classically trained artist who sounds unmistakably confident in his craft, yet more muted than usual.
Cumulatively, when employed as background noise, Break It Yourself can seem uneventful, even sleepy. But listen closely to lustrous, uncommonly delicate ballads like "Sifters" and the eight-minute "Hole in the Ocean Floor," and the washed-out colors start to shine. Coming from an artist who's become a model of sunny consistency over the course of a dozen albums with a zillion fans who've only grown more intense in recent years Break It Yourself is a quiet, careful grower. Give it time, though, and it blooms into something beautiful.
"Over a nearly 20-year career, Chicago singer, songwriter and violinist Andrew Bird has built a rep as one of indie rock's most beguiling light touches - a dude who makes Jeff Tweedy look like a Nordic death-metal pyro. Fusing elements of jazz, Celtic folk and chamber pop while softly talk-singing - or whistling - tunes with titles like "Scythian Empires", he might be gratingly pretentious, if he wasn't so unobtrusively amiable. But on his ninth album, Bird gets direct, even confrontational. 'Desperation Breeds...' sets the tone, opening the record with a dark blast of piano-guitar discord... The emotional urgency energizes his fluid multi-instrumental elocution and learned metaphors; sometimes it sounds like he's burning an effigy of his ex in the quad at iTunes U: On "Give It Away," he evokes "worthless currency" over a gently plucked violin, analogizing inflation and failure like the Ron Paul of love. Whether contemplatively highbrow (the symphonic meditation "Hole in the Ocean Floor") or forlornly down-to-earth (the alt-country of "Fatal Shore"), his angst studies feel cathartic without seeming mean-spirited; when healing marimbas and crickets materialize for the album-ending instrumental lullaby, "Belles," it's a welcome exhaling moment. He's earned his rest." - rollingstone.com, Jon Dolan, March 2012
"Andrew Bird is one of the most distinctive & creative songwriters today" - New York Times
"[Bird] is a prodigious multi-instrumentalist [and] a lyricist of obscure and subtle wit." - Vanity Fair
"There are few stranger, magical creatures in the indie rock world than Andrew Bird." - Associated Press
Features:
180g Vinyl
Double LP
Gatefold jacket
Selections:
1. Desperation Breeds...
2. Polynation
3. Danse Caribe
4. Give It Away
5. Eyeoneye
6. Lazy Projector
7. Near Death Experience Experience
8. Behind the Barn
9. Lusitania
10. Orpheo Looks Back
11. Sifters
12. Fatal Shore
13. Hole in the Ocean
14. Belles
