About

Weather Systems, released in 2003, is Andrew Bird's second solo album and his first after disbanding Bowl of Fire. Bird has said that the album was simply a side project during his four or five year recording of Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs. At least two of the songs on the album suggest this fact: "I" is a slower, more dreary version of Armchair Apocrypha's "Imitosis," and "Skin" is a similarly slow, instrumental version of The Mysterious Production of Eggs' "Skin is, My."

The disk features an eight-minute film by Bob Trondson about Bird and the recording of the album. The cover art was done by Jay Ryan.

The first track, "First Song," borrows its title and most of its lyrics from a poem in Galway Kinnell's book, What a Kingdom It Was, published in 1960. The penultimate song, "Don't Be Scared," is Bird's version of a song written and performed originally by The Handsome Family. - Wiki

“Bird is easily one of the best violinists ever to devote himself to popular music (as opposed to, say, Shostakovich), as his palette of sounds on the instrument is so broad here that it's sometimes slow to dawn that you're hearing a bow on strings. He weaves intricate layers of pizzicato skittering and legato texture everywhere, turning himself into a small orchestra to create a series of beautiful, well-considered arrangements for his songs. "First Song" rolls in like dust off the plains, with Bird whistling a loopy spaghetti-Western fanfare, while his fingerstyle violin plucking slowly creates a rich bed for his and O'Connor's harmonies. The deliciously evil "I" shatters the pastoral mood, though, as Bird's dissonant violin arrangement includes some strings pitch-shifted to sound like demon cellos and O'Connor's guitar sputtering like a dying gunshot victim. The vocal melody floats uneasily amidst the drones, and it takes a second to realize just how little Bird is using to create one of the most sinister songs I've heard all year.” - Pitchfork

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