Pick four songs from any band and you can tell a lot about their sound. This summer, I’m featuring #RockBlocks, four picks from bands across various genres. They might be wildly different from each other, but what binds them together is the fact that they’re all a part of my life soundtrack.
While My Finest Work Yet, as an album title, supposedly started as an inside joke, it wouldn’t be far fetched to suggest it’s Bird’s best. But more impressively, is the fact that he continues to write, record and perform at such a dizzying pace — without showing any signs of slowing down or losing his touch. The wondrous thing about “Sisyphus” is that, twelve albums in, it feels like the quintessential Andrew Bird song.
This was one of the new songs that I had the privilege of hearing live before the pandemic began. In Greek mythology, the figure Sisyphus cheated death twice, but was ultimately sentenced to eternal punishment by Zeus. His sentence: to roll a boulder up a hill in Hades for eternity. In some ways it feels like Andrew Bird has cheated a professional death. Every album has been strong from beginning to end with no lemons. Instead of rolling the boulder up the hill, Bird just keeps rolling along.
“Did he raise both fists and say, ‘To hell with this,’ and just let the rock roll?”