Andrew Bird

Inspired partly by the day's sociopolitical climate, his next collection of songs, 2019's My Finest Work Yet, was his second for Loma Vista and earned him a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. 2020 saw Bird make his acting debut on the fourth season of the acclaimed anthology television series Fargo, as well as release his first full-length holiday LP, Hark! Bird and former Squirrel Nut Zippers instrumentalist Jimbo Mathus joined forces to record 2021's These 13, a rootsy and primarily acoustic set with the two artists writing all the songs and playing all the instruments. That same year, Bird sat in on albums by Heartless Bastards (A Beautiful Life), Karen Marguth (Until), and Blake Mills & Pino Palladino (Notes with Attachments), and scored the award-winning documentary feature Storm Lake, about a small town newspaper struggling to stay in business. He scored a somewhat bigger project in 2022, the Judd Apatow comedy The Bubble, while also releasing a new studio album that same year, Inside Problems. Recorded live in the studio, it was an LP informed by Bird's lyrical take on the kind of ideas that trouble folks as they struggle to get to sleep. Bird continued to sit in with other artists, performing on Gabriel Kahane's 2022 LP Magnificent Bird (Bird was also one of the engineers on the sessions), and Rufus Wainwright's 2023's covers set Folkocracy. Bird put his own stamp on a set of a set of jazz and pop standards on 2024's Sunday Morning Put-On. Recorded live at Valentine Recording Studios, a vintage analog recording facility in California's San Fernando Valley, the sessions included bassist Alan Hampton and drummer Ted Poor, performing acoustically to enhance the intimate feel of the music and the interplay between the musicians. 2024 also found Bird collaborating with vocalist and songwriter Madison Cunningham on Cunningham Bird, a project where they covered all ten songs from the 1973 album Buckingham Nicks, which Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks recorded as a duo two years before they joined Fleetwood Mac. Cunningham and Bird's interpretations stayed true to the original melodies but transformed the arrangements with a small studio rhythm section sweetening Bird's string parts.~ Timothy Monger & Mark Deming

From 🇺🇸 United States