No meditation app is gonna really pull you out of that. Megan: A late night grappling with your innermost thoughts is like the opposite of Headspace.Īndrew: Sometimes when it’s really bad, there’s nothing you can do.
It can affect your perception of what you’re seeing.” “I think about how music can affect your perception of time, in that sort of cinematic way that music can make a scene slow down. I’m just lying there, a captive audience for it, and I decided, ‘Maybe I can try to organize all those late night spirals into lyrics.’ I was like, ‘It’s gonna be about an hour and a half before I actually fall asleep.’ So I would just invite the demons that were gonna come out eventually anyway, and have conversations with them.
Did the isolation serve as inspiration for this?Īndrew: I would go to sleep at night, and just lie there. Megan: A lot of artists came out of COVID with introspective work. Megan: Was it the inside problems of yourself or of others that inspired the album?Īndrew: It’s more my own internal, messed up world. It’s like, you could maybe see the slight wince in someone’s eyes while they’re smiling. Megan Hullander: What do you classify as an “inside problem?”Īndrew Bird: It could be so many things, as long as it’s concealed. Inside Problems is the simply most recent of Bird’s unending endeavors. He’s soundtracked films for Judd Apatow and PBS, even taking a rather successful swing at acting in Fargo. In anticipation of the album’s release, Bird joined Document to discuss its conception and trace the progression of his career, which has seen him flirt with worlds outside of album-making. In its 11 songs, the album explores the inevitable presence of thresholds, whether they emerge in mundane moments, like standing in a doorway, or more substantial ones, like crossing state lines. His newest single “ Underlands” follows “ Atomized“-both songs grapple with thematics that reference Icarus and Orpheus. Bird chose to let them in and repurpose them for his most recent album, aptly titled Inside Problems, arriving June 3. Inside problems keep you up at night, undeterred by melatonin or meditation apps-they incessantly nag at you. Beneath the surface, there were all kinds of wrong going on, the stuff Bird has dubbed “inside problems.” “I’m actually quite miserable if you must know.” Superficially, the lanky man in the men’s room was irritatingly joyful enough to whistle. Another man walked in, took notice, and asked, “What are you so happy about?” “Nothing really,” Bird replied. Years ago, Andrew Bird was in a men’s room at the urinal, whistling, as he often does. The musician joins Document to discuss his latest album and the many branches of his artistic career