My Finest Work Yet - Andrew Bird: Review

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Andrew Bird

is an American indie artist who has been wooing us for over 20 years with his violin playing and intoxicating vocals and has released a ton of albums in his years in the spotlight. Even though his most notable records came out in the mid 2000's Andrew has still been successful in this decade releasing some acclaimed and cult records in the past few years and on My Finest Work Yet he borrows from Death Of Marat (and to some degree Have A Nice Life) for a provocative album cover and dropped the singles Sisyphus and Manifest to promote the project. 

Review By Lavender:
Andrew Bird has always been an important part of indie music but to me was never an essential player. Every once in a while he drops an album that I enjoy but never really one I found incredible. 2007's Armchair Apocrypha, 2005's The Mysterious Production Of Eggs and Andrew's last record 2016's Are You Serious? are all albums that I enjoyed but aren't among my indie must listens. After a series of decent to excellent singles Andrew seemed to set up this project to join his best works to date, as the title would indicate, but giving this thing a listen it's clear that it lands more comfortably in the middle tier of his works. 

The lead single to this project Bloodless sets the tone for the project better than the two singles that followed. It's a lyrically decent piano ballad that pulls big time from Elton John in its brightest moments but has absolutely no business being 6 minutes long. The second single contains an influential elephant in the room that we will address later but what I will say now is that the song is an improvement on the first single. It's a catchy indie pop tune with sharp lyrics and a pretty solid performance. Finally he dropped one of my favorite singles of the year so far the absolutely fantastic Manifest. The song has some absolutely killer strings and a fantastic performance from Andrew that holds everything together perfectly. The hook is great and the sweetness of Andrew's vocals is absolutely impossible for me to get over and is the pure highlight of this entire project for me. 

Unfortunately the rest of the project doesn't quite live up to the height of the singles. Olympians is a lifeless barely there song with a stomach churning "turn it around" refrain that splits up a decent start to the record. Cracking Codes is a two part song that has some relatively corny lyrics in its low-key piano ballad first half. But when it transitions in the second part and the background vocals kick in it gets a little bit better but the songwriting is still pretty lackluster. 

Fallorun is one of the better songs with some fantastic string work but the track that lies at the base of it is just a far too generic indie pop tune with vocals that sound straight up stolen from Beck. The closing track Bellevue Bridge Club is an okay folky ballad with some good lyrics that leaves the album on a decent note but now is the point we have to talk about the difference between an average indie pop project and this maybe just above average one. 

The elephant in the room with this review is that Andrew Bird is ripping off some artists HARD across this project. I talked earlier about strong Beck and Elton John influences and it doesn't stop there as the second half of one of my least favorite songs Don The Struggle is a mediocre crossover of Vampire Weekend and show-tunes that is absolutely nauseating. Ultimately there is one real killer on this album that makes it hard for me to imagine revisiting most of its songs, and that is the uncanny influence of Father John Misty and his 2017 album Pure Comedy. The single Sisyphus as well as album tracks Archipelago and Proxy War sound so much like Pure Comedy B-Sides that Andrew comes off as a FJM cover artist more than a musician of his own. All of these tracks not only have songs that sounds identical to them on Pure Comedy but they don't bring the same fantastic performances and hilarious wit that Josh Tillman is capable of. So even if I did wish to hear some music of this sound, I would visit tracks like Pure Comedy and Total Entertainment Forever long before I dug to My Finest Work Yet. 

In conclusion this album is just straight up middle of the road decent but the borderline stealing from other artists makes a handful of the tracks that may otherwise be enjoyable into a dizzying minefield of trying to find the songs that are worth your time. 5.5/10

For more indie music check out my review of Better Oblivion Community Center's self-titled album here.

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