Watch the session here: 

A new Andrew Bird record is a tempting excuse to wheedle a tour in the songwriter’s mind-palace, to perhaps launch into long discourses on history, archaeology, environmentalism, politics, wrestling, large-scale disasters, or emotions as a result of listening deeply. Bird excites music nerds with structure and progressions in tunes like “Don the Struggle”, delights music fans with charming anthemic choruses on “Fallorun”, and arms the politically-engaged with tunes like “Bloodless”, and even name-checks J. Edgar Hoover in song ("His enemies are what made him whole".) But then, this is the same songwriter who has also thought of ways to include “cartographer” in lyrics, as well as to address oceanic concerns, the compacting of organic matter, fallen empires, and other heady and well-considered topics.

On his latest record, cheekily titled My Finest Work Yet, Andrew Bird manages to embrace self-doubt, engages with both beauty and terror, and goes into the depths of the intimacy between adversaries, all the while leaving room to make things personal or escalate them to the international (with thanks to the AV Club’s interview). It is with immense fan reverence (for this fan, especially!) and celebration that we welcome Andrew Bird to the studio to perform some new material from My Finest Work Yet. -Caryn Havlik