Pitchfork

"The rural Midwest is a real sleeper," writes Chicago violinist, whistler, and songwriter Andrew Bird in the introduction to his Daytrotter session. Bird, who spends part of his time in a farmhouse in northwestern Illinois, makes songs that are sleepers, too; his delicately voiced wordplay doesn't always emerge immediately from the folk-flecked chamber-pop arrangements. He recently stepped into Daytrotter's Quad Cities studio accompanied by rarely touring Chicago indie-rock veterans Dianogah, as the two acts have an album together due next spring on Southern. Their four songs together here don't quite have the frank friendliness for which the Midwest is (deservedly) known, but their cerebral brand of pastoralism is still pretty inviting.

Armchair Apocrypha's "Fiery Crash" opens with swooping, continental violin evoking Beirut (appropriate, as it was half-written in Marseille) before becoming a steadily flickering folk-rocker that mentions both Dramamine and CNN ranter Lou Dobbs. Weather Systems' "Lull" puts Bird's vibrato-laden musings on moderation or lack thereof above lightly brushed drums. "A Breaks B" is a slightly mathy, percussive track from the forthcoming Bird-Dianogah collaborative record. The set closes with a sparse take on Armchair Apocrypha's "Plasticities", which Bird performed on "Late Show with David Letterman" in April.

MP3s/Streams:> Andrew Bird: Daytrotter Session
[Armchair Apocrypha is out now on Fat Possum; Weather Systems is out now on Righteous Babe; a forthcoming album by Bird and Dianogah is due next spring on Southern]