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L'Apocalisse, sbadigliando...
Sta succedendo la fine del mondo, e sul serio, là fuori, ma noi, gente di spirito arguto, noi che siamo eleganti e raffinati, sappiamo di non aver tempo per queste inezie. Non abbiamo paura, noi. Siamo perfettamente calmi. Vogliamo star qui ancora un po', invece, a goderci quei piaceri di cui, a saperli apprezzare, la vita è tutt'altro che avara. A tutto questo rumore poi, e all'Apocalisse, o fine del mondo che dir si voglia, che avanza minacciosa fuori dalla nostra finestra, noi rispondiamo con un beato e beffardo sbadiglio...
Non dissimile da quella appena descritta dev'essere stata l'immagine ispiratrice sulla quale Andrew Bird ha sviluppato l'ultimo suo album, "Armchair Apocrypha", uscito nel marzo di quest'anno con la nuova (per lui) etichetta Fat Possum. Andrew Bird, polistrumentista (violino, chitarra, glockenspiel), nato a Chicago nel 1973, già esponente della scena alternative statunitense con il suo precedente gruppo the Bowl of Fire, ha provato, in questo nuovo lavoro, una chiave compositiva impostata sulla rilassatezza, sia melodica che testuale. Il risultato è una maggiore coesione e omogeneità tra le dodici tracce che compongono l'album, rispetto ai precedenti lavori, il penultimo dei quali, "The Mysterious Production of Eggs", era uscito nel 2005.
Il brano di apertura, "Fiery Crash", con l'accattivante fraseggio di piano elettrico, chitarra amplificata, e batteria che attacca con delle rullate in souplesse per farsi via via sempre più esigente, è un brillante bigliettino da visita per tutto l'album. Il secondo brano, "Imitosis", è una rielaborazione di "I", tratto dall'album del 2003 "Weather Systems": ascoltabile, ma chi già conosce il brano di provenienza rimarrà forse un po' perplesso di fronte a questa passione di Bird per l'autocitazione. Già in "The Mysterious Production of Eggs", infatti, era contenuta "Skin Is, My", rivisitazione di "Skin", compresa anch'essa in "Weather Systems".
Con il terzo brano Bird ci convince però definitivamente dell'elevato valore di quest'album. La traccia s'intitola "Plasticities": "plasticità" al plurale, ma anche, forse, "città di plastica". La prima interpretazione del termine fa riferimento al carattere cangiante e multiforme della melodia di questo pezzo, che viene plasmata e messa in movimento, in particolare nel chorus, dal magnetico riff di chitarra elettrica e dalla voce di Bird che guizza tra le righe del pentagramma come un delfino dentro e fuori le onde del mare, modulando questi versi: "we'll fight we'll / we'll fight for your music halls / and dying cities / they'll fight they'll fight / for your neural walls / and plasticities / and precious territory" (combatteremo, noi combatteremo per le vostre sale da concerto / e per le città morenti / combatteranno, loro combatteranno / per le vostre reti neurali / e per le plasti-città / e per il prezioso territorio). I testi in tutto l'album sono colti ed ironici: nel caso appena citato, per esempio, Bird gioca con la pronuncia di "we'll fight", da lui alterata in "whale fight", come a dire che tutto il daffare per avere spazi dove fare musica, città ordinate (anche se di plastica!), e cervelli sempre più performativi, si risolve alla fine nient'altro che in un combattimento di balene (sic!).
Il brano più sorprendente dell'album è probabilmente "Armchairs", costruzione sontuosa come un palazzo neoclassico, che tuttavia riesce a mantenersi leggera e dinamica per tutti i sette minuti della sua accattivante durata, nei quali passa attraverso continui cambi di melodia. In altri brani, come "Heretics", spicca l'eccellente lavoro del batterista Martin Dosh, che in quest'album è anche alle tastiere, nonché co-autore di alcune delle tracce.
Esatto, millimetrico il mixaggio, realizzato ai Pachyderm Studios di Cannon Falls (Minnesota), mette ogni suono al posto giusto sotto il cantato di Bird, ora deciso, ora sospirato e sussurrato, ottimamente coadiuvato, come nel citato "Fiery Crash", dal contrappunto di Haley Bonar, giovanissima cantante country pop dal Minnesota che può già vantare un proprio repertorio da solista. Ricco il tono di chitarre e piano elettrico e delle preziose inserzioni del violino, strumento prediletto e suonato da Bird. La dinamica delle melodie, il calore e la profondità del suono globale sono comunque merito delle tastiere Rhodes e Wurlitzer di Dosh.
Una nota a parte va dedicata al fischiettio, o whistling che dir si voglia, così amato da Bird, e a cui ha ormai abituato i propri estimatori. Bird fischietta un po' dovunque sui propri brani, usando il fischio labiale alla stessa stregua di un qualsiasi altro strumento musicale. Può piacere oppure no, alcune volte risulta a mio avviso ridondante, come in "Simple X", altre volte è efficace, come nell'intro di "Darkmatter".
Un accenno merita la notevole "Schityan Empires", in cui Bird parla di oscure civiltà antiche e di cavalieri dell'Apocalisse, mentre la musica "segue" il testo, evidenziandone i punti nodali. Due gli strumentali: un raffinato e breve "The Supine" e un altro con l'onere di chiudere questo pregevole lavoro, "Yawny at the Apocalypse", dove su soavi echi campestri si dipanano i sereni e distesi accordi del violino di Bird, come il risveglio di un bimbo in un fresco mattino.
"Armchair Apocrypha" è un ulteriore significativo lavoro di Andrew Bird. Dopo sei album da studio, poteva sembrare che le sue doti di autore di testi e musiche, nonché di straordinario interprete nei suoi live show, avessero esaurito il margine per successivi sviluppi. E che avrebbe continuato, come molti, a riproporre una formula musicale collaudata e capace di garantirgli l'apprezzamento del consolidato uditorio. E invece no. Ogni tanto, le impressioni ingannano. Nel caso di questo album, ciò è sicuramente un piacere.
Andrew Bird, "Armchair Apocrypha", Fat Possum, 2007
Elenco tracce testi samples e video
01 Fiery Crash (04:12)
Turnstiles on mezzanine
Jet ways and Dramamine fiends
And x-ray machines
You were hurling through space
G-forces twisting your face
Breeding superstition
A fatal premonition
You know you got to envision
The fiery crash
Oh close your eyes and you wake up
Face stuck to a vinyl settee
Oh the line was starting to break up
Just as you were starting to say
Something apropos I don't know
Beige tiles and magazines
Lou Dobbs and the CNN team
On every monitor screen
You were caught in the crossfire
Where every human face
Has you reaching for your mace
So it's kind of an imposition
Fatal premonition
To save our lives you've got to envision
And to save all our lives you've got to envision
The fiery crash
It's just a formality
Why must I explain?
Just a nod to mortality
Before you get on a plane
Oh close your eyes and you wake up
Face stuck to a vinyl settee
Oh the line was starting to break up
What was that you were going to say?
02 Imitosis (04:01)
He's keeping busy
Yeah he's bleeding stones
With his machinations and his palindromes
It was anything but hear the voice
anything but hear the voice
It was anything but hear the voice
That says that we're all basically alone
Poor Professor Pynchon had only good intentions
When he put his Bunsen burners all away
And turning to a playground in a Petri dish
Where single cells would swing their fists
At anything that looks like easy prey
In this nature show that rages every day
It was then he heard his intuition say
We were all basically alone
And despite what all his studies had shown
That what's mistaken for closeness
Is just a case for mitosis
And why do some show no mercy
While others are painfully shy
Tell me doctor can you quantify
He just wants to know the reason, the reason why
Why do they congregate in groups of four
Scatter like a billion spores
And let the wind just carry them away?
How can kids be so mean?
Our famous doctor tried to glean
As he went home at the end of the day
In this nature show that rages every day
It was then he heard his intuition say
We were all basically alone
Despite what all his studies had shown
That what's mistaken for closeness
Is just a case of mitosis
Sure fatal doses of malcontent through osmosis
And why do some show no mercy
While others are painfully shy
Tell me doctor, can you quantify?
The reason why
03 Plasticities (04:28)
This isn't your song
This isn't your music
How can they be wrong
When by committee they choose it all?
They choose it all
You're gonna grow old
You're gonna grow cold
Bearing signs on the avenue
For your own personal Waterloo
You're bearing signs on the avenue
For your own personal Waterloo now
We'll fight, we'll fight
We'll fight for your music halls and dying cities
They'll fight, they'll fight
They'll fight for your neural walls and plasticities
And precious territory
This isn't our song
This isn't even a musical
I think life is too long
To be a whale in a cubicle
Nails under your cuticle
Gonna grow old
You're gonna grow so cold
Before this song can deliver you
You're bearing signs on the avenue
You're bearing signs
For your own personal Waterloo now
We'll fight, we'll fight
We'll fight for your music halls and dying cities
They'll fight, they'll fight
They'll fight for your neural walls and plasticities
And precious territory
04 Heretics (03:34)
Bored holes through our tongues
So sing a song about it
Held our breath for too long
‘Til we’re half sick about it
Tell us what we did wrong
And you can blame us for it
Turn a clamp on our thumbs
We’ll sew a doll about it
And tell us all about it
How ‘bout some credit now
Where credit is due
For the damage that we’ve done?
Wrought upon ourselves and others
With a slow and vicious gun
And although pratfalls can be fun
Encores can be fatal
And then I hear you say
"Thank god it’s fatal
Not shy
Not shy of fatal
Thank god."
Wait just a second now
It’s not all that bad
Are we not having fun?
You’re making mountains of handkerchiefs
Where the mascara always runs
So be careful when you’re done
You’re bound to get post-natal
What, did I just hear you say?
"Thank god it’s fatal."
We don’t want to hear the sound of a door
And we don’t want to read the signs that you bore
You know, the kind of sign you hang on the door
Saying, "we’ll be back"- what a crack
Now don’t you think we might have heard that before?
Bored holes through our tongues
So sing a song about it
Held our breath for too long
‘Til we’re half sick about it
Tell us what we did wrong
And you can blame us for it
Turn a clamp on our thumbs
We’ll sew a doll about it
05 Armchairs (07:03)
I dreamed you were a cosmonaut
of the space between our chairs
and I was a cartographer
of the tangles in your hair
I sighed a song that silence brings
it’s the one that everybody knows
oh everybody knows
the song that silence sings
and this was how it goes
these looms that weave apocryphal
they’re hanging from a strand
these dark and empty rooms were full
of incandescent hands
and awkward pause
a fatal flaw
time it’s a crooked bow
oh time’s a crooked bow
in time you need to learn to love
the ebb just like the flow
grab hold of your bootstraps
and pull like hell
‘till gravity feels sorry for you
and lets you go
as if you lack the proper chemicals to know
the way it felt the last time you let yourself
fall this low
time
oh time
it’s a crooked bow
time’s a crooked bow
fifty-five and three–eighths years later
at the bottom of this gigantic crater
and armchair calls to you
yeah this armchair calls to you
and it says that
some day
we’ll get back at them all
with epoxy and a pair of pliers
as ancient sea slugs begin to crawl
through the ragweed and barbed wire
you didn’t write you didn’t call
it didn’t cross your mind at all
and through the waves
the waves of a.m. squall
you couldn’t feel a thing at all
you’re fifty-five and three-eighths tall
time
06 Darkmatter (05:08)
When I was just a little boy
I threw away all of my action toys
While a I became obsessed with Operation
With hearts and minds and certain glands
You gotta learn to keep a steady hand
And thus began my morbid fascination
Tore the spines from out of all of these self-help books
Made myself a gun that not only shoots but looks
So real
It shoots through steel
With rays of dark matter
Do you wonder where the self resides
Is it in your head or between your sides
And who will be the one who will decide
Its true location
And does the thought of bile that’s red and black
The thought of tongues that taste you back
Fill you with a nauseouseous sort of elation
A noose is loosed around our necks made of DNA
And every day it’s growing tighter no matter what they do or say
And you can shoot right through it with rays of dark matter
Just before they kick out the ladder
With rays of dark matter
Like something catching fire
Do you wonder where the self resides
Is it in your head or between your sides
And who will be the one who will decide
Its true location
07 Simple X (03:37)
Some people wake up on Monday mornings
Barring maelstroms and red flare warnings
With no explosions and no surprises
Perform a series of exercises
Hold your fire
Take your place around an open fire
Before your neurons declare a crisis
Before your trace Serotonin rises
Before you're reading your coffee grounds
And before a pundit can make a sound
And before you're reading your list of vices
Perform the simplest exercises
So here we are at the end
The war is over
There's nothing left to defend
No cliffs of Dover
So let us put down our pens
And this concludes the test
Our minds are scattered about
From hell to breakfast
Hold your fire
Take your place around an open fire
Don't open fire
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