Today, with the release of new single and cat-filled music video ‘Make a Picture,’ Andrew Bird shares the final preview of his most lush and rousing album yet. Out 3rd June on Loma Vista Recordings, Inside Problems is a collection of 11 original songs about the complex thoughts, questions and middle-of-the-night obsessions swirling around in each of us. Delivering his signature synthesis of unforgettable melodies, magnetic energy and inventive turns of phrase, ‘Make a Picture’ extends a lineage of exhilarating hits like ‘Sisyphus,’ ‘Roma Fade’ and more, injected with the inner demons and uncanny imagery that uniquely defines the world of Inside Problems.
On ‘Make a Picture,’ Andrew Bird describes scenes of running through streets like feral cats, defying the impossible and rising above cries of a wounded metropolis and pliable populace, as he refers to himself as an irrepressible optimist working with a fatal flaw. Directed by Matthew Daniel Siskin, the music video manifests the track eccentrically, capturing Bird in the midst of a photoshoot with a pack of felines, in between shifts at a lone hospital desk, where he performs a minor surgery to extract frames of film from beneath his skin.
Andrew Bird says, “‘Make a Picture’ is about digesting images from historic events and constituting a narrative for your memory. ‘Tell us what you think you saw. Make a picture.’ We saw a lot of horror and darkness and a lot of inspiring bravery. So, what’s the story we tell after digesting? What’s the synapses’ synopsis?”
‘Make a Picture’ is the latest in a recent streak of stirring new singles and striking visuals to emerge from Inside Problems, following album opener ‘Underlands,’ the Joan Didion-inspired ‘Atomized,’ and an enigmatic short film that took viewers deeper into the abstract mindset and curious quandaries behind the album. Like all of Inside Problems, ‘Make a Picture’ was produced by Mike Viola and recorded live and straight to tape by Andrew Bird and his four-piece band. With nearly no overdubs, the music “transports listeners to a lush musical world” (NPR Music)
Andrew will be performing tracks from Inside Problems this summer on his recently announced European Tour. Culminating at London’s O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, July will see Andrew Bird play 7 nights over 9 days, including headline shows at Berlin’s Metropol, Utrecht’s Tivolivredenburg and Cologne’s Gloria, as well as performances with full orchestras at Day’s Off Festival in Paris and Lyon’s Les Nuits de Fourvières Festival. Full tour listing below. Tickets are on-sale now at andrewbird.net/#tour.
