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What happened to the glory days of the ’90s?
Andrew Bird mixes with no matches at the Roseland in Portland, Ore.
Erratic head movements, dramatic hands, musical multi-tasking – Andrew Bird fans knew to expect the unexpected at his sold-out show at the Roseland in Portland on February 21st. The classically trained violist with an operatic whistle turned debonair indie-rocker from the South, is more a mad scientist than artist. He creates musical concoctions that explode and bubble unexpectedly onstage, only lightly based on the original recipe. And tonight he brings his usual components – violin, xylophone, homemade phonograph horn and guitar. His 3-man band, which he only incorporated into his act since his last album, backs him up with bass, keys and drums. But tonight he adds a clarinet and saxophone to the mix.
Just as many drinkers as minors pack into the Roseland’s dark yet spacious concrete womb. Even a few parent-child duos stand on the outskirts, peeking over the hipster fros. Some people dress as an obvious nod to Bird’s own classic look – finely tailored vests and jackets, tight jeans and shiny leather shoes. He ritually removes the latter and reveals a pair of striped socks before stepping onto a Persian carpet and picking up his bow.
This is my fifth Andrew Bird concert. He never fails to endear with his idiosyncrasies but surprise with his musical improvisations. No one song will sound the same twice, unless you buy an album and put it on repeat. The album tracks will undoubtedly not match his live renditions. Bird began using an elaborate loop-pedal system two years ago, with the release of Armchair Apocrypha, his fourth solo album. He plucks a tune, loops it, plucks a new one, loops it, makes a beat, and loops it. Then he collages in violin solos and whistle arias until the song reaches symphonic levels of sound. Only then do the band members begin to decorate the loops with small details, a sax toot here, a bass solo there.
Tonight he does the same thing (taking off his shoes, looping, grotesque hand dances) he did last summer and the summer before, but this time mixing from his new release, Noble Beast. Each song sounds distinct and reworked. Although I initially attributed the unexpected twists of his performances to improvisation, I now believe Andrew Bird gets little sleep, eats little food, and spends all night experimenting with sounds and compositions of his songs. Perhaps they’re rehearsed after all – Andrew just has 100 versions of each one.
He played a newer song, Nonanimal, going from a completely unfamiliar but beautiful Americana Dixie violin solo to a cinematic, techno beat. At moments his rapid violin scales and vibrato trills sound like German-baroque string compositions, but at other moments they twang in the Southern tradition of bluegrass. Bird’s voice, all the while, maintains perfect pitch and surprising force reminiscent of the late Jeff Buckley. His looped beats, indie-rock guitar, country twangs and classical motifs make him comparable to artists like Elvis, Debussy, Jay Ungar and Tristeza, although none of these artist have much in common.
It’s all about tension and release with Bird. He builds to a moment, takes the audience to a state of anxiety, and then releases a word, a note, a sound that turns nervousness into ecstasy – like a first kiss. His head tick, dramatic hands, slight build and intense concentration make him more of a spectacle than the average indie performer. Bird keeps conversation to a minimum onstage. His comments seem more an afterthought than a scripted performance. In fact, the only explanation Bird shared at the Roseland prefaced the song “Effigy.” “This is a song about the guy who sits alone at the end of the bar whom we secretly fear that we’ll become.”
In past concerts Bird has spoken more to the audience, always in a poetic yet dry quality, as if speaking to reaffirm his music, not to connect with viewers. This night, in the dark, snug but very unsmokey venue, Bird creates art with musical science – he composes entire orchestras alone with technology. He plays old favorites like “Why?” with just violin and voice, like he did when I saw him as a teenager. Though it’s completely different than the album version, I start to notice similar strains in how he played it before, perhaps two years ago. But maybe I’m just searching for patterns.
Now on the pages of Vanity Fair, selling out shows, Andrew Bird has started to create more cinematic music, but his persona stays steady and elusive. Though his show tonight includes several instruments, the violin and the whistle still drive the composition. So perhaps familiarity and improvisation are just results of a well-formulated experiment with unexpected results. In all the imprecision of his demeanor (the crazy hair, the muffled speaking voice), he’s quite precise in execution (perfect rhythms, fine pitched voice). With his intimate portrayal of passion and involvement with his music, Bird runs the risk of being sexy, and therefore exploited by new listeners with star-crush tendencies. But it seems to me the man spends more hours on his violin than minutes socializing per day.
Painter Analee Fuentes mixes the colors of life and death
The Oregon artist explores themes of heritage in her paintings, and updates the cultural image repertoire of Chicano America
Analee Fuentes has deep laugh lines unusual for someone so familiar with death. But perhaps that’s the Mexican in her – she would rather celebrate life and contemplate death with dancing skeletons. The Oregon painter embraces her heritage and encourages everyone to do the same. She blends the colors of a youth spent in the San Diego barrio, eating her abuelita’s orange bowls of rice and crafting jewelry with her mother and sisters, into Frida-inspired portraits of her family. Flying tacos, corn stalks and fruit surround her figures as if nourishing the realistic bodies – a nostalgia not idealized, but made thoughtful by the brush strokes of a trained nurse and painter.
“I believe in humor,” says Fuentes. Laughter suits her soft face, framed by long salt-and-pepper hair. She’s a Chicana artist and activist, an educator and firm supporter of teaching visual literacy. Perceptions and mainstream representations of contemporary immigration concern her, and she strives to express her politics through the personal aspects of her art. “It’s important to know and embrace who you are,” she says. “Part of being democratic is understanding your heritage, too.”
Using cultural histories to inspire her work speaks both personally about Fuentes’s family and publicly about Mexican American culture. Death, color and maternity are not just motifs in her paintings, but themes in her life. Fuentes’ sister Yolanda Lopez, an internationally renowned artist and activist, participated in the Chicano movement of the late 1960s. Both women use the sense of heritage instilled in them by the matriarchal figures of their family as food for their creative appetite.
“My mother always used to have something going on. She was an artist.” According to her mother, “Art was like eating,” she says. “It was something that everybody has to do somehow.” Fuentes kept that hunger alive as a painter, curator and art teacher. She cared for her mother during the last moments of her life, and honors her memory by using the creative gift passed down a generation. In one portrait, Fuentes crafted gold-leaf pajaros and placed them next to the image of her mother. Like these birds, Fuentes escorted her through the passing of life into death – an important theme in Mexican culture, and a recurring one in Fuentes’s paintings.
Fuentes and Lopez have used the creative gift as a starting point for expressing social responsibility through art. They advocate visual literacy, and see reading images as necessary to understanding culture. “Art really exists within its own cultural context. Artists really do become a reflection of their era,” Analee says. “This is such a powerful communicative tool.” Images have the dual power to persuade and inspire. Fuentes recognizes this and stresses that the media often reinforce stereotypes and flash commercial images numbing us to analytical consideration of what we see. Without visual literacy, she says viewers are sitting ducks.
Between classes, throwing paint on the canvas and advocating visual literacy, Fuentes promotes fellow heritage-inspired artists by curating shows in the Northwest. Last April she hosted an exhibition called Latino Visions. “By putting these wonderful artists who do colorful, interesting, expressive and political artwork in the public view, it shows a very positive and important part of our own culture, which is rapidly changing,” she says.
Besides promoting work, Fuentes makes the majority of her sales at galleries and openings. Teaching allows her the luxury of painting what she wants, but she has several friends who work hard and often make personal (and political) sacrifices in order to create art that sells. As she explains the draining process of packing and unpacking large paintings, lugging and hanging them from place to place, the laugh lines on her face begin to reveal the wear of hard work.
And the grudge work looks even grimmer as the economy downsizes, affecting every sector of commerce – art included. While Tomas Kincaid’s cozy-house painting empire might survive (Fuentes gags at the mention of his name), the photography department at her school has been cut and Fuentes is still paying off her student loans. Many local artists in her community have been hit by the cold waves of economic realities. Fewer people buy art when they can’t afford house payments. Fuentes even admits that she’d sell her favorite painting, a 6-by-6 mural of her grandmother. “If somebody gave me the right price,” she says laughing.
Fuentes at least maintains a sense of humor and hope for young artists and her own future. The barrio has taught her to be grateful, her sister to be aware, and her mother to nourish creativity. Fuentes says she’ll be working until she’s an old woman. But this idea seems less a burden than homage to her roots and a thank you to her family.