Souverian; Andrew Bird

In an album with 12 songs, 5 have whistlings and this one is the last (but not the least). I discovered that “Souverian” is a word in old French for “sovereign” that means “exceptional in quality”; someone wrote in Songmeanings.net that “a google search turned up a farmer named Souverian P. Frigon who was born in 1850 in Canada and immigrated to Iriquois County, Illinois (Andrew Bird’s home state). Might just be a coincidence, but this Souverian being a farmer fits in with the pastoral images of parsnips, thistles, thrushes, and grasses. Perhaps Andrew Bird is spinning a story around a real but mostly unknown figure?”

You must being thinking why I am speculating that much. Because not even Andrew Bird himself knows why he composed it:

This one remains mysterious to me. So let’s just leave it there.

^^
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I’ like to know more about music, so I could speak about Bird’s influences, evolution of sound... these things. Because I don’t, all I can give are informations about the songs. Well, this blog never meant to be about musical trends; it’s more like an encyclopedia... We’re fine this way, don’t we?

Though bells will ring
Church steeples were catchin fire
If you promise spring
Then I’ll know you are a liar

Cause in the spring
Tender grasses won’t burn easily
Tough thrushes sing
Still my lover won’t return to me
Wild parsnips they still scald my lungs
While thistles will burn my feet

And if you join our chorus
You will never fear anymore
So here it comes the chorus
We will meet on a fatal shore

Souverian Souverian the elder
Souverian Souverian was free
Souverian Souverian we feld her
So very young so very young were we

Birds will sing
Still my lover won’t return to me
You promise spring
Still my lover won’t return to me
Wild parsnips scald my lungs
And thistles are burning my feet

So here it comes the chorus
You’ll never fear anymore
If you join a chorus
We will meet on a fatal shore

Under the elders
The older get younger
The younger get over
Over their elders
Under the elders
Pretend that you’re older now

Under the elders
The older get younger
The younger get over
Over the elders
Under the elders
Bending your branches down

We who are so very young
Still my lover won’t return to me
Thrushes sing
Still my lover won’t return to me
Wild parsnips they still scald my lungs
While thistles still burn my feet

Not a Robot, But a Ghost; Andrew Bird

“Effigy” has not whistling in it, nor “Nomenclature”, so the next whistling song is “Not a Robot, But a Ghost”. Again, Drowned in Sound explains this beautiful song:

“This is the last song I wrote for this record. It was a Dosh instrumental track that I really loved called ‘First Impossible’. I wrote these lyrics and wrestled with over a hundred tracks we painted on then peeled away with a heat gun. You could read this as a protest song, a break up song or some vague geopolitical quagmire instantly resolved by a brilliant algorithm.”

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I run the numbers through the floor
Here’s how it goes
I crack the codes I crack the codes
That end the war

The Hour

I pushed a note under your door
Here’s how it goes
Things come to blows
But we don’t want this anymore
No, we don’t want this anymore
I crack the codes you end the war

I hear the clockwork in your core
Time strips the gears till you
Forget what they were for
I push the numbers through your pores
I crack the codes I crack the codes
To end the war

How’s my living
You can call
Encrypted numbers
On bathroom stalls

There’s something burning
It casts a pall
It’s melting numbers right
Off the walls

Tenuousness; Andrew Bird

I skipped “Effigy” because I don’t know where is the album here in my archive, so I couldn’t upload the song. In fact, I also don’t know if it’s a whistling song as well. So I’ll let you with “Tenuousness” today and tomorrow I come back with “Effigy”.

“This is an odd one. Definitely not a story song, but one that tries to create a sense of tenuousness with syntax. The word ‘tenuousness’ itself is clearly onomatopoeic, like a frayed rope bridge. Traveling the world for most of a year tends to make me amazed that things hang together as well as they do considering how divisive and chaotic even the smallest countries can get. And knowing that everything is connected and propped up by imaginary things like, oh, credit for instance. Is there order in the universe? What’s to keep this planet from spinning off its axis to be lost?”

Tenuous at best was all he had to say
when pressed about the rest of it, the world that is
from proto-Sanskrit Minoans to Porto-centric Lisboans
Greek Cypriots and and harbor-sorts who hang around in quotes a lot

Here’s where things start getting weird
while chinless men will scratch their beards
and to their minds a sharpened axe
is brushed upon the Uralic syntaxes

Love of hate acts as an axis
Love of hate acts as an axis
First it wanes and then it waxes
So procreate and pay your taxes

Tenuousness
Less seven comes to three
Them, you, us plus eleven thank the heavens for their elasticity
And as for those who live and die for astronomy

Know when to stand or when to sit
Can’t stand to stand can’t stand to sit
Now who would want to know this

Click
Click
Click

Who wants to look upon this
Who wants to look upon this
Pray tell

Who wants to look upon this
Who wants to look upon this
Pray tell
Pray tell

Tenuousness
Less seven comes to three
Them, you, us plus eleven comes just shy of infinity
and as for those who live and die from numerology

Fitz and the Dizzyspells; Andrew Bird

That is the third song of the album Noble Beast. I'm still searching for infos about it, so I'll let you with only lyrics, song and video for now. So, enjoy A.Bird for one more time!

EDIT: I found on Drowned in Sound a track-by-track interview with Bird, guided by Songfacts.com. Now I'll post all of his song on the album “Noble Beast”. ^^

“The operative word here is 'flail'. Put away the china and just go berserk. It helps with blood flow and confusing predators. The song goes from catastrophic forces of nature: violent storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions to internal turmoil. Night terrors brought on by ingestion of hallucinogenic aubergines. Talks about language and how we must sew our own coats and not depend on old definitions: a theme readdressed in the song 'Nomenclature'.”

Comes and goes
Like in fits and dizzy spells
Like the weather

And it blows
Like it knows what's going wrong
Like it's clever

Has a name but the name goes unspoken
Weather vanes
Were all twisted and broken
So soldier on, soldier on

Flailing to the whir of a snack machine
And muted screams of an old regime
And then oh
Something gets in it
The nightshade gets in it
We were all fast asleep
Were all so fast asleep
But you woke us
You woke us from the strangest dream that an aubergine could ever know
Would ever know

Lava flows over crooks and craggy cliffs to the ocean
And explodes in a steam heat fevered cyclical motion
Has a name
But the name goes unspoken
It's in vain
Cause the language is broken
So cast your own, cast your own
Soldier on

Masterswarm; Andrew Bird

Bird told Drowned in Sound that in this song he continues the idea in “Oh No” “of another consciousness beneath our skin.” He explained: “I wrote this after I got food poisoning in the Rocky Mountains. I was impressed by the body’s override function. It knows what must be done. This then connects to groups or swarms of birds, fish or insects that seem to move as one with their own surface tension. Nature’s brain.”

Come what may
Lay your eggs where it’s warm
We come here to swarm
Come by sea
Swarm like smoke in the dawn
We were the young
We were the swarm

Radiolarians
Midges and moths
Out from a cloth
We were the young
We were the swarm

Flailing fetal fleas
Feeding from the arms of the master
Burrow into me
And this is sure to misspell disaster
Oh and the young in the larval stage
Orchestrating plays
In vestments of translucent alabaster

So they took me to the hospital
They put my body through a scan
What they saw there would impress them all
For inside me grows a man
Who speaks with perfect diction
As he orders my eviction
As he acts with more conviction
Than I

Oh, burrow into me
This is sure to misspell disaster
Oh, burrow into me
You're feeding from the arms of the master

We were the young
We were the swarm
We were the young
Radiolarians

We were the young
We were the swarm
We were the young
Radiolarians

We were the young
We were the swarm
We were the young
Radiolarians

Come what may
Come what may
Come