With Noble Beast, it’s more of the same from Andrew Bird -- cascades of gentle Euro folk descending upon a lovely bedrock of arcing loops and woozy guitars, as Mr. Bird drops a thesaurus-pumped set of lyrics in the middle of his increasingly (and paradoxically) gorgeously sad pop panoramas.  Whether or not it’s better than Armchair Apocrypha is open to debate; the only thing for certain is that what’s more of the same for Andrew Bird is about as good as it gets for everyone else.