A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

Hav­ing been going to largely Chi­nese gigs in Bei­jing for the last almost-year, this gig was a bit of a shock to the sys­tem from before we even set foot in the venue. I went with a group of about ten friends (all for­eign­ers), and as we were cross­ing the road on our way over from din­ner, we ran into a lone Amer­i­can on his cell phone look­ing a lit­tle lost. When he saw the group of us, his face cleared and he said “oh, don’t worry about it, I’m in the right place.” And so began a night that was a com­plete con­trast to last week’s gig at Jiangjin­jiu: instead of being the only white faces in the room, I was sud­denly part of a major­ity of cau­casians. It doesn’t hap­pen that often at a gig in Bei­jing, and it was a bit jolting.

Racial major­ity aside, how­ever, this gig was des­tined to be amaz­ing from the get-go. Yugong Yis­han was the per­fect venue — a mix of hip­ster class and rock and roll edge — befit­ting of a man who turns a clas­si­cal vio­lin into an instru­ment of rock. The open­ing act was Hang Gai, a Mon­go­lian throat singing folk out­fit that per­forms reg­u­larly around Bei­jing. They didn’t dis­ap­point, in their own right, but it was an inter­est­ing choice for an opener. There are plenty of indie pop groups around Bei­jing who would have set a more fit­ting mood than Mon­go­lian throat singing, but I’m sure there was more at work in the choice than musi­cal com­pat­i­bil­ity. Any­how, I spent most of the pre-show upstairs wait­ing for the main act than down in the pit. 

Which was alter­nately a good and a bad idea. The pit was packed by the time Andrew Bird took the stage. I went for a last-minute bar run and had to lit­er­ally fight my way through to my friends. Which is par for the course at a Chi­nese gig, but it proved hard to remem­ber that I didn’t just have to use my elbows; every­one in the room could under­stand “excuse me, can I get past?” But the inter­est­ing part of this gig was not crowd pol­i­tics, of course. 

Andrew Bird was spec­tac­u­lar. He came over by him­self, which meant that he built his songs on the spot, record­ing sec­tions of vio­lin and bass and his patented whistling, expertly tim­ing and play­ing them back. The time given to build­ing the song to the point where the lyrics kick in makes you appre­ci­ate the lay­ers and com­plex­ity to the song even more, and it sounds richer because of how aware you are of each piece of instrumentation.

He played all the expected songs — Pal­stic­i­ties, Imi­to­sis, Ner­vous Tic Motion, Syth­ian Empire — and intro­duced a new song, one he didn’t give a title to and said the lyrics were ten­ta­tive. It was clas­sic Andrew Bird fare and I loved it. The per­for­mance was per­fect, with the occa­sional — but, of course, charm­ing — slip-up of tim­ing and for­got­ten lyrics. 

The night was not with­out its typ­i­cal Chi­nese sound tech prob­lems, though. Just as he’d built the sound for Ten­u­ous­ness, almost as if on cue for the lyrics, the entire sound sys­tem cut out with a loud ‘crack’. Every­thing was cut, instru­ments and mic, and the sound tech cut through the pit crowd like light­ning. Andrew looked slightly stunned, and some­one in the crowd called out “made in China!” The prob­lem was fixed quick enough, with no hard feel­ings from the crowd or diva moments from the per­former, but the song did have to start all over again. It worked, though, and the sound was oth­er­wise bet­ter than most.

Of course, the show felt far too short. With one song for an encore, a cover of Dylan’s Oh Sis­ter, it all felt like a much too short expe­ri­ence. How­ever, I was impressed with every moment of it. Many acts fall down in the vocals or the instru­men­tals, but even just with one man on a stage, Andrew Bird impressed on all counts.