Andrew Bird Discovers Pop
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The record he purchased that day was the Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin, a rock album distinguished by its psychedelically expansive production. “I thought, ‘OK, this is technology put to good use,’” he says. “Two years ago I would’ve scoffed at overdubs or anything digital.” And what do you know: The Swimming Hour, which arrives in stores on Tuesday, employs a series of delirious string overdubs. “I accepted the process of making a record, producing in the purest sense of the word,” Bird says. Actually, he still feels a little weird about it: “It’s almost unholy how easy it is to put something together and make it sound like a million bucks using overdubs,” he says. “It just shouldn’t be right.”
A month after he finished recording Oh! The Grandeur, in the spring of 1999, Bird spent three weeks in New Orleans, where he says new kinds of songs poured out of him. “I didn’t really recognize what I was writing,” he says. “I got into this routine where every morning I’d make myself coffee and just start writing all day.
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