Most records, you build from the drums and bass up. This one, we started with the vocals in Nashville and recorded them live with just the guitars and tried to make that complete and lovely-sounding without any adornment at all. I really wanted to get something with the vocal that I've never gotten before Armchair Apocrypha.
Andrew BirdThere's always that struggle between me wanting to keep [song] new and fresh and then be - I can never get with pop songs being so repetitive.
Andrew BirdNorman is a very up-close, personal, character drama and I'd like to do something more zoomed out, a little more pastoral, some sweeping epic. I'd like to try something different.
Andrew BirdWhat you see at the Field Museum is only like, 10 percent of the collection. It's birds of paradise and passenger pigeons and in all these drawers that pull out, these specimens come out and it's spectacular. And it worked out.
Andrew BirdThis might be a controversial thing to suggest, but in a quest to understand and relate to terrorism or school shootings, sometimes it feels like it's real, the appeal. As we've seen with ISIS, it's not always the devout who are getting into it; it's just people looking for a sense of belonging. The more they feel they're up against, the more intensity the cause has. It's an epic clash of cultures, and both sides are playing that up, but it's human beings disaffected, detached, and lonely.
Andrew Bird