originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

We're sitting in Erica's living room listening to Andrew Bird's new CD, The Mysterious Production of Eggs for the third time. I had pre-ordered it on Amazon so we should have had it February 8 when it came out, but they shipped it UPS, which screwed everything up.

[UPS side rant: UPS is useless to me. I'm never home (and I don't live in a big building with a doorman or anything) and then, to add insult to injury, when they've tacked the dreaded 3rd notice to my front door and I have to go pick up my package at the UPS office -- it's in Northbrook! I live in a major city precisely so I can use public transportation and don't have to own a car. I had to wait until my roommate was in Las Vegas so I could borrow his pick-up truck, which meant that I got my package tonight literally minutes before it was put on a truck to be shipped back to Amazon.]

[Disclaimer: don't bother telling me about package redirect requests or having stuff shipped to work or whatever. I know how to get UPS packages, this time it was just a cascading series of problems that led to having to drive to Northbrook at rush hour on Friday. But we did get to eat tooooo much food at that suburban delight, Steak N' Shake.]

Where was I? Andrew Bird. Amazing. This new CD is a collection of songs that have been fan- (well, Erica-) favorites in concert for years but haven't appeared on any of his earlier albums. A lot of these songs have evolved quite a bit over the years as Andrew has experimented with different sounds, and I think they're great here. [Erica: "They're perfect! This is already my favorite Andrew Bird CD!"]

And it's got everything you'd expect and want on an Andrew Bird album: Kevin O'Donnell (dreamy), Nora O'Connor (Erica: "Smouldering!"), a CD booklet chock-full of Jay Ryan art, two songs whose titles are little pictures, whistling, and haunting, beautiful, rocking songs.

Andrew's on tour right now opening for Ani DiFranco, so the CD release show won't be until April 16 at the Metro. I'm sure I'll be raving about it in April. And Andrew will be backing Ani on her appearance on the Late Late show with Craig Ferguson on Monday (February 21).

If you'd like to hear some of these songs evolve, there are 50 different Andrew Bird concerts available from the Live Music Archive (it was a fun weekend once going through a spindle of 50 CD-Rs making Erica a instant collection).

And here's A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left from the new album (from Andrew's Listen page).