Andrew Bird, Ra Ra Riot and the Indie-Yuppie

GUEST WRITER- Derek Purdy, Upland, CA

A summer evening at the Greek harkens back to the days of toga-clad Hellenes, spilling the wine and shooting the shit while Dionysius mans the BBQ, roasting some goat…except the toga’d Greeks now wear top-sliders and fedoras and bourgeoisie beer and tuna rolls supplants mammal meat on a spit. Indeed the socio-evolution wagon train is still trucking and somewhere along the way, the Indie-Yuppie fell out the back. The Indie-Yuppies are restricted to Laemmle theaters and foreign films but are not above pot-induced screenings of “Pineapple Express” or other Rogan fare. The IY despise the Shins, but adore Arcade Fire. They scoff at Snow Patrol and go ape-shit for the Arctic Monkeys. They wear Tom’s shoes, homespun clothing, and humanitarian attire, but they hate people. The IY call LA their home, but claim a spiritual connection with NY, and plan to move there once their unemployment checks come through. The IY makes no sense, and it was only fitting that a concert exhibiting two IY-approved acts would be both a spiritual experience and as boring as hell.

First the boring part. On July 10th, rocking the Greek Amphitheatre, the phenomenal Andrew Bird was preceded by Syracuse natives, Ra Ra Riot, a band clearly riding the coat-tails of Bloc Party, The Wombats, The Submarines, Tokyo Police Club, and most recently Vampire Weekend: each the perfect dosage of prep and pop and each with a secured spot on Nick and Norah’s infinite playlist. Ra Ra was not so much riotous as it was repetitive. Every song was reminiscent of some non-descript Vampire tune that I heard at some non-descript house party where we ate hummus and debated Wes Anderson’s legitimacy as a writer and director (The IY are split: they love his films but are turned off by his popularity with the Philistines).

The questionable Riot played songs from their 2008 debut Rhumb Riot and the similarities to Vampire’s self-titled debut are stark. Riot singles “Dying is Fine” and “Can You Tell” are tame, however formidable doppelgangers to Vampire’s “A-Punk.” Lead singers Wes Miles and Ezra Koenig have an almost synonymous vocal timbre and style making it difficult to tell the two apart. Both claim a Western classical music and Afro-pop influence and both merely scratch the surface of these genres making it seem as though Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” and a tribal drum display on Africa day at their respective college campuses was all it took to warrant them as an ‘influence.’ The one discernable throwback came from the Morrisey-inspired synthesizers and vocals, but, again, the repetitive nature of their song set rendered all influential ornamentation obsolete. Each and every song gelled together into one massive furniture music piece. Satie for the hipster: music written to be ignored.

Ra Ra was blah blah. However, when the lights again grew dim and Andrew Bird took the stage everything was made right. Here now was the prime example of Western Classical music not only influencing a modern artist, but being re-invented by a modern artist, for Mr. Bird is the master of the classical form deconstructed.

Take, for instance, his performance of “Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left.” The piece begins with a single violin line: the formation of a basso continuo. He loops himself and begins working on the next line up. Harmonic lines are added and looped, and then he arrives at the melody and a fugal piece has been executed by one man on the spot. His Cantus Firmus, a nervous tic, is repeated, mutilated, morphed, and ornamented several times over, and this is all before the band comes in. By introducing every one of his songs one piece at a time via this auto-looping process, we get to see these great pieces deconstructed - raw materials stacked on top each other to create this wonderful architectural and symphonic wall of sound.

While Bird has proven his Baroque prowess in song construction, he also evinces mastery over Romantic styles as well, namely the Impromptu- the improvisatory form used by Chopin and Schumann in the Romantic period. These composers would compose pieces based on a melody in a completely improvisatory manner. Andrew Bird does no less in his live performances. Armchair Apocrypha’s ‘Dark Matter’ was a massive departure from album recording. New lyrics were added. Harmonic structures were warped. Instrumentation was rehashed. Bird painted a picture of ‘Dark Matter’s’ doppelganger for us and he titled it ‘Sweet Breads.’ This impromptu practice was utilized, to some extant, on the entire set and in doing so, he created a living work of art, never to be replicated or duplicated. Soaking in Bird’s beautiful music is truly a holistic and individual experience.

And maybe that’s why the Indie-Yuppies flocked to this venue and this concert. A people marked by baffling polarities, it is only fitting that they would pay to see both a knock-off and a one-of-a-kind in a single sitting. Perhaps Ra Ra’s mundane pop slop provided the perfect counter-balance to Bird’s virtuosic whistling and impeccable compositions. I don’t know, ask an Indie-Yuppie. Quick - before that employment comes through.