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Sep 24, 2012 Andrew Bird By Mike Hilleary

As previously reported, this October Andrew Bird will be releasing Hands of Glory, an eight-song companion piece to this year’s Break It Yourself. Inspired by Bird’s recent bout of “old-time” live sets, the album was recorded with Bird’s full backing band, all playing acoustic instruments.

“The past three summers now we’ve had these band get-togethers at my barn in western Illinois,” says Bird in a press release. “They begin with little more pretense than to capture the way we make music together. After a few days sleeping, eating and jamming under one roof we get increasingly inspired and ambitious about what we’re doing.” According to Bird the record “begins with two songs we actually recorded in a church in Louisville on a day off on our July tour. The rest was recorded around a single microphone at the barn in August. We ended up putting the drums on the back porch. I hated to exile Martin like that but it just sounded better. ‘Something Biblical’ I started writing in July well into the severe drought that hit the Midwest this summer. I kept having dreams of a great flood. Nothing biblical—just a local deluge. The day we left the barn it rained pretty hard.”

Featuring a new take on Break It Yourself‘s “Orpheo Looks Back,” as well as covers of the Carter Family, the Handsome Family, Alpha Consumer, Hands of Glory also features several new tracks, including “Three White Horses,” which has become available to stream online. If you pre-order the record’s on Bird’s website, you can receive the track as a free download. Click below to listen. Hands of Glory is out Oct. 30 on Mom + Pop.

Hands of Glory:

Three White Horses
When That Helicopter Comes
Spirograph
Railroad Bill
Something Biblical
If I Needed You
Orpheo
Beyond the Valley of the Three White Horses

(www.andrewbird.net)