Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire - Oh! The Grandeur

(Ryko/Festival)

***

Review: Graham Reid

Violinist Bird's last album with this band was a serving of crazy cabaret jazz and gypsy folk of excellent good humour - and not a little spot-my-references stupidity.

The good news is nothing's changed: here again they mine the Hot Club sound, mug it up Satchmo-style ("Feetlips, why do you do that way?"), toss off Groucho lyrics ("My grandad prescribed vidilia 'for whatever ails ya' ... ") and sound like the kind of people who have a copy of Yakka Hula Hicky Dula among their old records.

Over the long haul it strains for effect in the bent humour department, but any album which opens with the line, "You let me in your house with a hammer," closes with "a drinking song in the grande style" (actually an anti-drunk song) and includes a nice lazy setting for Galway Kinnell's poem Wait has a lot going for it.

Wonder if they pressed a limited edition on 78 rpm shellac? That'd be appropriate for music this old-fashioned and high-spirited.