Andrew Bird Trio 

The mercurial virtuoso returns to his love of sumptuous jazz records with this enchanting album of smokey crooners.

"I’ll admit that under the Jazz banner we are blessed with some of the greatest moments in the history of music (Coleman Hawkins’ “Body and Soul”) and perhaps some of the worst (I won’t name names). My point is that this American artform carries a lot of baggage and lore that can be hard to cut through. Once I had some distance between myself and this time when I was under its spell, I wanted to immerse myself in jazz again.

Working with the masterful rhythm section of Ted Poor and Alan Hampton, we were riding a fine line. Every song had to try to transcend nostalgia and jazz with a capital J, and that led us to playing fewer notes and singing a lot more than I expected. I wanted to push myself as an improviser and see if a lifetime of listening and woodshedding could get me into the same solar system as Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins. And speaking of those tenor sax players, I wanted to make my instrument do what a reed instrument does with breath and phrasing but with my bow on a string and breaths of air through my vocal cords. In short, 'Sunday Morning Put-On' is all about tone." - Andrew Bird