Album: Andrew Bird, Hands of Glory (Wegawam Music)

The "companion piece" to Break it Yourself, recorded in response to enthusiasm for the "old-time" segment of his live show.

Old time? Yes and no. Oldness manifests in the way, in Bird's hands, the past appears to mist the present and in stark arrangements in which things fit together like ghosts blending in cold rooms. But actually, for all Bird's reverence for American rural music of the past, Hands is startlingly contemporary. Spook yourself.