By Jacqueline Hlavenka

Singer-songwriter Andrew Bird has a way for making natural disasters, effigies and plane crashes sound downright pretty. There isn’t much the man can’t do: he’s a classically trained violinist, an accomplished guitarist and, oddly enough, a skilled whistler. On “Noble Beast,” Bird is trying to spread his wings into new musical territory with longtime friends Martin Dosh (guitar/keyboards) and Michael Lewis (bass/clarinet). He’s a perfectionist by nature, and “Noble Beast” is certainly well executed in a technical sense. What “Beast” lacks is the romanticism and panache that made Bird’s previous albums so disarming.

The problem may lie within the title itself: the beast here is entirely too tame. The album’s title track, “Oh No” is typical Bird fare, but nowhere near what he’s capable of. He ventures too deep into a mine and tries to find a way out-both physically and metaphorically (“Oh, arm and arm with all the harmless sociopaths/calcium mines were buried deep in your chest”). “Masterswarm” is a different story. Bird morphs into a different person (“Inside me grows a man/who speaks with perfect diction/as he orders my eviction/as he acts with more conviction than I”) who becomes an idealized version of whom he really wants to be.

Nevertheless, Bird never skips on beauty. “Nomenclature” has a lovely sense of dissonance. He’s restless on “Tenuousness” (“can’t stand to stand/can’t stand to sit”) and throws himself into a tizzy on “Fitz and the Dizzyspells.” He’s still very much enamored by the natural world on “Natural Disaster” and “Anonaminal,” but both tracks are background music at best. Bird is a frontman at heart, and it shows on the percussion-driven “Not a Robot, But a Ghost,” with instrumentals by guitarist Martin Dosh. On the surface, “Not a Robot, But a Ghost” may come off like an anti-war song (“I crack the codes that end the war”), but the “war” here is a break-up. He’s been programmed by an ex-lover, erased and left empty in the end. Moments like “Ghost” are what truly harness the beast that’s within.