November 27, 2023

Andrew Bird – Outside Problems (Loma Vista/Concord)

Andrew Bird…his 15th solo album, Outside Problems, is a cheering and improvisational album that plays freely in the auditory outdoors.

The obvious relation to last years Inside Problems is not only in name. Melodic ideas from this predecessor can be heard, even if only in a rough sketch of what they eventually became.

Bird described his creative process for Outside Problems as “playing for the joy of it and to get these ideas out of my head.”

This ‘joy-of-it’ intent is displayed in full. A sort of kittenish glee comes out in tracks like Mormon House Party. Listening closely you can almost sense Bird standing outside, with closed eyes, and just playing.

Which he did, by the way. Bird actually recorded these tracks outside in Ojai, California. Though he was presumably inspired by his surroundings, you sense an exploration inwardly into the unknown.

Yet Bird doesn’t endlessly explore. He returns to a series of motifs (or, wink-wink nudge-nudge, Mo Teefs) as a home base for this melodic adventure.

I found myself considering similarities to Brian Eno’s original conceptualisations of his minimal ambient Music For Airports.

Music softly playing in the corner of the room, leaving plenty of space and providing a different listening experience to the typical full-frontal approach of an album.

However, Outside Problems is not ambient music. It is too… alive for that.

I listened to the album with my flats windows wide open and exposed to the birds outside, whose songs felt as though they sat neatly within the soundscape of What We Saw.

What a pleasure! Some of Mother Earth’s session musicians playing along.

This album clearly ignited my whimsical spark. I swear I heard the tracking of the clouds in Heaven’s Boughs.

Outside Problems is of course, not without weakness. In the albums lowest moment it dips its toes into some sort of indie-video-game-esque muzak.

This only happened once in my listening experience – specifically within the album’s second track, Epilogue.

The rigidity of regular structure began to bubble up, and Outside Problems started to lose the hold of its quintessential joyful essence.

Luckily, Festivus immediately skipped the album away and regains its looseness and freedom.

I want this album to play while I dance in a field of very long grass.

Marlon Millwood