Andrew Bird has a lot going on these days. Many years ago, the handsome whistling bastard was a member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, the briefly-huge swing revivalists. Last month, Bird reunited with the Zippers for the first time in 22 years, performing a song for NPR’s remote cameras. Bird is also part of the current cast of the great TV show Fargo, and Hulu just began streaming that show’s new season yesterday. So this seems like an opportune moment for Andrew Bird to announce a damn Christmas album.

Bird actually put out some Christmas music last year, when he dropped a holiday-themed EP called Hark! Bird’s new album, also called Hark!, is coming in about a month. The Hark! album will include all six songs from last year’s EP, as well as seven new joints. Those new songs include tracks from John Prine, the Handsome Family, and John Cale.

Today, Bird has shared his take on “Andalucia,” a song from the former Velvet Underground member John Cale’s 1973 solo album Paris 1919. Cale’s original — which Yo La Tengo already covered on 1990’s Fakebook — is a soft romantic murmur. Bird has made it even softer, rendering it as twee acoustic indie-folk. Below, listen to Bird’s rendition and Cale’s original and check out the tracklist for Bird’s new album and what Bird has to say about the whole enterprise.

Bird says:

Let’s not talk about the dubious motives that might lead an artist to make a holiday record. It’s a complicated relationship many of us have with the holidays and the requisite music we hear. So let’s admit that it’s a utilitarian thing. The music is just one contributing factor to our communal or solitary joy and melancholy. As a musician, it’s an excuse to take a break from writing the next record and indulge in an unapologetically nostalgic exercise. I’ve done my best to find some lesser known gems. A passing reference to wintertime sentiment is all it takes to make the cut on Hark! A mention of snow falling in John Cale’s “Andalucia,” a namecheck of Christmas in John Prine’s “Souvenirs” or as the setting of the drunken fiasco in the Handsome Family’s “So Much Wine,” remade as “Greenwine.”

There’s an original tune I wrote in April during the most disorienting phase of the pandemic, when I couldn’t help but wonder where we’ll be when the holidays come, if we could be together or not. I’ve been writing a lot of songs inspired by this uninspiring predicament. Let’s hope they all become obsolete as soon as possible.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy Hark! And that it underscores better times.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Andalucia”
02 “Alabaster”
03 “Greenwine”
04 “Christmas In April”
05 “Souvenirs”
06 “Oh Holy Night”
07 “Mille Cherubini In Coro”
08 “Night’s Falling”
09 “Glad”
10 “Christmas Is Coming”
11 “White Christmas”
12 “Skating”
13 “Auld Lang Syne”

Hark! is out 10/30 on Loma Vista.