Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production Of Eggs Turns 20

"There will be snacks."

At the turn of the century, only Spoon's Britt Daniel could match Andrew Wegman Bird for sloganeering. While Daniel fired off dispatches from rarified dirtbags and guttersnipes, Bird dove into his own baffling world, emerging like a deep-sea diver clutching pearls of perplexing wisdom. Visions of "Don Quixotes and their B-17s," demands to "Let it be printed on every T-shirt in this land/On the finest of cottons and the hippest of brands," and, of course, snacks.

Next to the folky offshoots of ’00s indie rock, Bird cut a strange figure. In the ’90s, he'd been a sideman to zany swing revivalists Squirrel Nut Zippers before he created Andrew Bird's Bowl Of Fire, a slightly more buttoned-down version of the big band nostalgia he and Jimbo Mathus delighted in. But, after a sour show where his band bailed on him, the Chicago native looked to recalibrate. Thanks to a smorgasbord of pedals plugged into his violin and a co-sign from Ani DiFranco, his solo show garnered rapturous and befuddled acclaim. His 1996 debut Music Of Hair and excellent 2003 follow up Weather Systems presented a sideman in search of a voice. And Bird finally found it in all its confounding glory on 2005's The Mysterious Production Of Eggs.

Bird's whimsical delivery and pliable baritone makes him sound like a kindly older brother, best seen when he took on the role of a musical teacher "Dr. Strings" on children's TV. (Side note; I saw Bird perform in 2012 and two drunk 30-year-olds screamed "DR STRINGS" between every song before he played half of the jingle then apologized for not remembering all of it.) Bird's music is less "for kids" and instead achieves the great pantheon of "for all ages"; Pixar, Ghibli, The Goonies. And just like Spirited Away, between the beauty and warmth some truly fucked up shit happens. It's a trick Bird lampshades by chuckling "A tale that's rather grim and gory/ is it just another children's story/ That's been declawed?"

The aforementioned "Don Quixotes and their B-17s" arrive in "Sovay." In a verbose feat only matched by Aesop Rock, Bird rhymes "Ride Of The Valkyries," "vagaries," and "proclivities" in a skewed story about idle suicidal ideation, (literal) highway robbery, and plotting the destruction of the political caste — all while soaring, windswept violins and chiming glockenspiel match his lackadaisical coo. Listen without paying attention to the lyrics and "Sovay" is all charming pleasantries. With the lyrics it's all Brothers Grimm (and gory). It's no surprise that Bird would become a confidant to St. Vincent; her early work also delighted in twisting the screws on the margins, crafting unease in the minutia.

Bird's love of swing, vaudeville, and big band is perched in the periphery of Mysterious Production, a rhetorical, usually surreal, flourish. See regal opener "/=/," where Bird's golden, shimmering whistle duets with a pile of tired strings, sounding like a warped version of muzak from 1950s corporate commercials. Similarly, there's the wonky flow of "Banking On A Myth," which bounces unevenly on sour, plucked violins straight out of an A Hawk And A Hacksaw album.

Bird was also happy to match menace with muscle. On "A Nervous Tick Motion Of The Head To The Left" a hopeless duo talk to a shadowy organization after a near-death experience only to find out "by all accounts you really should have died." The swooping strings, glitchy drumming, and Bird's beady-eyed delivery give the song an unexpected, but apropos, punch as our protagonists are left with no answers, only anxiety. Equally unsettling is "Opposite Day," where Bird bemoans that he didn't transform into an octopus on a made-up holiday where physics and society both break out into bloody revolutions. The slinky string work injects delightful dread as Bird mumbles coy threats to the 1%: "They're going to wake up in institutions, in prison, or in hell."Then it suddenly mutates into a cheery folk tune, with Bird portraying a member of a celestial bureaucracy, making excuses for why the world didn't end. "I'm under explicit orders to dare not speak its name/ Listen, I just work here," he stammers, like the beast of revelations is under an NDA.

Though it's always taken at an obtuse angle, Bird's narratives focus on freaks and outsiders looking in at a world of excess. "Measuring Cups" follows school kids with developmental disabilities, the titular kitchen tool being used to scope out the exact amount of pink matter you have. "We'll give you a complex and we'll give it a name," Bird sighs. As someone who grew up with dyslexia and dysgraphia, Bird's sarcastic telling off of teachers and administrators who view kids as statistics made me furious and gave me a speck of hope. "Sovay" and "Measuring Cups" aren't the only songs that dream of guillotines. "Banking On A Myth" similarly sniffs at power, as a Svengali figure makes Faustian bargains, "though it might involve child labor," Bird sneers.

Even the album's biggest song, "Fake Palindromes," is a crooked and worrying tale. It bursts forth with joy, big as a U2 chorus, only for Bird to talk incessantly about monsters and a serial killer that wouldn't be out of place on a Clipping. song. Bird played most of the instruments on Mysterious Production, but Kevin O'Donnell's percussion is the delectable foundation. "Fake Palindromes" sounds as massive as it does thanks to his avalanching drum fills, and the jittery "Skin Is, My" slides between sexy and silly on skittering toms. The same goes for the album's most colossal track, "The Naming Of Things."

"The Naming of Things" is one of the few times that Bird does a more traditional indie-rock performance, a subtle reminder he is a hell of a guitarist. His chords swoop, duck and rise like a boxer before the chorus hits, a choral of violins matching his crunchy riff with O'Donnell's cavernous percussion propelling the song as Bird breaks out into a heartrending violin solo. That moment, where Bird's notes swirl like fall leaves caught in a gale, is one of the few where he flashed true virtuosity. He showed an incredible amount of restraint on Mysterious Production. Despite being the indie violin guy, Bird's string work is an accomplice, not the focal point. There are stunning moments of dexterity, like the rising string orchestra on "Nervous Tick Motion Of The Head To The Left" or the rambunctious, plucked solo on "Skin Is, My." But with Mysterious Production Bird never flashes technical prowess for the sake of it.

The one true folk song on the album, "Masterfade," has Bird preforming inverse numerology from the Pixies' "Monkey Gone Heaven." Aided by a lounging, legato violin and comely guitar, Bird assigns numbers to various woodland critters who appear to have invaded his studio. As he comes around to 1s and 0s, he decides they represent the stars, the pinpricks of light winking secret signals in binary. And yes, there are the snacks. "Tables And Chairs" is a charming ramble about the post-post apocalypse. Bird mentions visions of climate change doom but brushes them aside with child-like wonder as he imagines the after. Chimes and a tangled web of harmonies join his promises of "pony rides and dancing bears" in the smoking rubble of banks and the halls of Congress. It's hard to tell if there's an edge of sarcasm in his words, patronizing accelerationists as the world goes to shit. But once he promises "There will be snacks!" there's an infectious joy that leaves little room for a sardonic reading. If you're going to live in surreal, why not indulge in giddiness?

Attempting to place Bird alongside other indie rockers was (and is) like drawing out an uneven Venn Diagram. Though buddies with Iron & Wine, Bird rarely found himself in the same coffee shop softness, and his angular weirdness skewed away from Joanna Newsom's mythical chamber music. Sufjan Stevens, who'd later play piano on Bird's records, might still be the closest peer. Newsom, Stevens, and Bird's albums were dispatches from their own warped worlds, but where Newsom created deep, mystic lore and Stevens made minor details miraculous, Bird gave tiny peeks into his own absurdism, each glance behind the curtain answering one question and proposing a dozen more. "Look at this freak," Bird seemed to say (often referring to himself) before happily skipping away to the next bizarre transmission.

In the years since, Bird has become a sort of elder statesman in the same vein as his friend Chris Thile. After Mysterious Production, Bird expanded on his sound with his most indie-leaning record Armchair Apocrypha, then his experimental and wonderfully excessive Noble Beast. By 2012's Break It Yourself, Bird had finally burrowed into the Americana that his background always suggested. Most of the 2010s found Bird experimenting with ambient, remixes, and finding a similar niche to Thile, with a smattering of vocal jazz and a full Christmas album. He still crafts sterling beauty ("Pulaski At Night," "Proxy War") but surrealism is scarce. It's curious to compare the two Birds. The modern is one cool, composed, and calm — the version from 20 years ago a lanky, reedy fella who no one (including himself) knew quite what to do with. Much like the anxious bird/llama/goat/thing on Mysterious Production’s cover, the cuteness might be better served when tempered by uncertainty. And snacks of course.