181. Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs (2005)

Another album of inoffensive folk-pop, except this time there's some Beatlesy instrumentation to convince people that it's something more than an album of inoffensive folk-pop. Now here's the thing about this kind of music: I can't stand all that much of it. I love folk music, but the best of it, especially recently (I'm thinking about stuff like Songs: Ohia's Didn't It Rain and Iron & Wine's The Shepherd's Dog here) always contain some kind of darkness in the lyrics or interest in the arrangements that just isn't present here.  The whole thing is just so calculated. It's the kind of stuff designed to make well-off white folks hold their chins between thumb and forefinger and pontificate on how well-produced and pretty it is while they wander around in an art gallery and look at old photos of Andy Warhol altered in clever ways. It certainly is pretty, and almost every track has some sort of nifty production trick to keep you listening. But I play this whole thing and I despair a little bit. It's like a critic-bait movie made for the express purpose of addressing Big Themes and winning Oscars. Sure, the technicals are impeccable and there's no specific thing you can point at and say "That's bad," but it's just lacking heart. It's so goddamned well-behaved and humorless (or if it does have humor, it handles it, in the immortal words of Achewood, with a lab coat and tweezers). Like a lot of this Pitchfork-approved stuff, it makes me want to go and throw on a Meatmen or Frogs record.

MY RATING: 4.3

Andrew Bird - "Skin Is, My"