Andrew Bird appears to be back with a new album in 2019, the proper follow up to his 2016 album Are You Serious. The album is currently listed on Apple Music with an anticipated release date of March 22, 2019.

He did technically release an album in the interim, Echolocations: River. The largely ambient experimental album isn’t a radical departure from the classically-influenced indie folk that he is most well known for, but it’s hard to call it a true “new” Andrew Bird album.

The first single to be released from the album is “Sisyphus,” which is packaged with a new video. It features Bird wearing the a bizarre costume, riding a bicycle through the desert. Sonically, it’s pretty standard fare for the singer-songwriter, with layers of instrumentation and soft vocal melodies.

According to a press release, the album was recording at Barefoot Recordings in Los Angeles with producer Paul Butler. The band took a new approach to recording the songs, opting to forgo headphones and separation when taping. This approach was taken with the goal of the instrumentation bleeding into each other’s microphones. Lyrically it’s a fairly dark record, grappling with our complicated times – though musically, Bird says that it’s a relatively upbeat affair.

My Finest Work track list

1. “Sisyphus”
2. “Bloodless”
3. “Olympians”
4. “Cracking Codes”
5. “Fallorun”
6. “Archipelago”
7. “Proxy War”
8. “Manifest”
9. “Don The Struggle”
10. “Bellevue Bridge Club”

Photo Credit: Alyssa Fried