Andrew Bird’s highly anticipated follow up to 2009’s Noble Beast won’t hit shelves until March 6, but we’ve got a few exclusive details about his upcoming album.
The album is titled Break It Yourself and will be released on Mom + Pop records (out March 5 in the UK via Bella Union). It was produced at his Western Illinois barn-turned-studio. Break it Yourself is Bird’s twelfth album.
“We had our front of house engineer Neal Jensen bring his old Tascam 8-track tape machine and Yamaha board (nothing fancy) out to my barn,” Bird said about the recording. “We rolled tape as we were learning the songs and to our surprise we started nailing the songs by the second take. I think we got a rough, unfussy honesty in this session.”
Bird said the sessions for the album were a “mix of distilled, grounded songs and some wild soloing.” The band for the Break It Yourself session included long-term collaborator Martin Dosh on drums, Jeremy Ylvisaker on guitar and Mike Lewis on bass.
The album includes songs like the steel-drum heavy “Danse Caribe,” the instrumental “Behind the Barn” and the lush, eight-minute “Hole in the Ocean Floor.”
