In folklore, a “Hand of Glory” is the dried, severed hand of a man that has been hanged for his crimes. The hand then serves as a candle holder and is meant to be used by thieves, variously, to unlock doors, to render one’s opponents motionless, and most usually, to provide light only to the user. (If you’re well versed in Potter-lore you might recall Draco Malfoy using a Hand of Glory to lead the Death Eaters through Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder in the Half-Blood Prince.) It’s an artifact that’s been invoked for centuries as a symbol of evil servicing evil, even in death. The idea is that the mere memory of a wicked man is enough to guide another potentially wicked man to commit further malfeasance.
Andrew Bird’s latest album, that falls somewhere between EP and LP, is called Hands of Glory, a term that, at first, might conjure imagery of splendor or worship, but in the context of the aforementioned folklore, seems far more grisly. How the label applies to these eight songs (four covers, three originals, and a re-working of a song released earlier this year) is not exactly clear. Of note is the fact that the album title is plural. This might be Bird ironically referring to his own hands, self-deprecatingly playing on the fact that the term sounds so glorious.
Bird is definitely conjuring the past to provide guidance for the future on this album, via the covers, and he’s definitely thinking about death, mythology and religion, via the subject matter of his original material. A man that uses a Hand of Glory in pursuit of evil will, likely, eventually be caught and hanged himself, providing the opportunity for his own hand to become a shriveled relic for the next generation of villains. Similarly, a musician might be influenced by those musical hands that came before his, create music based on that influence, and leave behind musical remnants for those that come next.
Bird provides covers of “When that Helicopter Comes” (The Handsome Family), “Spirograph” (Alpha Consumer), “Railroad Bill” (Ramblin’ Jack Elliot), and “If I Need You” (Townes Van Zandt). All of these, save “Spirograph,” are relatively faithful renditions of country songs with Bird meeting the songs halfway between their original versions and his customary string-heavy folk sound. “Spirograph” is the outlier here, a song written only a few years ago that sounds so drastically different from the original version that it’s nearly unrecognizable.
Bird basically re-writes the melody, lending considerably more weight to the song’s grim subject matter, and subtly adjusts the lyrics so that the song would seem like a dead ringer for an Andrew Bird original to anyone that didn’t know any better. (For example, “unbendable baby” becomes “unendable bendable baby,” a phrase that is so God damn Andrew Bird-ian that I was shocked to find out the song was a cover before comparing the songs and hearing that Bird had, indeed, added this touch himself.) Bird also changes the melody and lyrics to the verses so that each one ends with a single two-syllable word (“blazing,” “younger,” “sifting”) that he sings in a series of descending notes that sounds as if he’s falling down a well. It’s an extremely affecting way to tell a story about a man that dies and is followed by his wife five years later. You can practically hear their lives coming to an end as Bird’s voice trails off at the end of each verse.
Bird basically re-writes the melody, lending considerably more weight to the song’s grim subject matter, and subtly adjusts the lyrics so that the song would seem like a dead ringer for an Andrew Bird original to anyone that didn’t know any better. (For example, “unbendable baby” becomes “unendable bendable baby,” a phrase that is so God damn Andrew Bird-ian that I was shocked to find out the song was a cover before comparing the songs and hearing that Bird had, indeed, added this touch himself.) Bird also changes the melody and lyrics to the verses so that each one ends with a single two-syllable word (“blazing,” “younger,” “sifting”) that he sings in a series of descending notes that sounds as if he’s falling down a well. It’s an extremely affecting way to tell a story about a man that dies and is followed by his wife five years later. You can practically hear their lives coming to an end as Bird’s voice trails off at the end of each verse.
The original material on the album also finds Bird considering death and the religions and mythologies that attempt to make sense of it.
On “Something Biblical,” Bird sings of farmers praying for God to deliver water for their crops but the “county remains dry.” This indicates the prayers are going unanswered and may also be a reference to “dry counties,” usually religious southern counties that have banned alcohol. All the while, however, Bird recognizes that if these prayers ever were answered, God doesn’t exactly have a track record of flooding in a restrained manner: “still we keep on dreaming/ of that 50-year flood/ of oceans of plasma/ and rivers of blood.” In other words, you’re always just praying for death one way or another.
“Orpheo” is a re-worked version of a song released earlier this year on Bird’s Break It Yourself LP called “Orpheo Looks Back.” The songs appear to have more or less identical lyrics though the plucky lead instrumental line that propelled the former version has been stripped back to nothing but humble strings and Bird’s quavering voice. Both songs are about the Greek mythological figure, Orpheus, and his journey to the underworld to guide his dead lover, Eurydice, back to the world of the living. The repeated references to “not looking back” or “it’ll disappear” relate to the bargain that Orpheus made with Hades allowing him to bring Eurydice back to life: he would need to walk in front of her and could not turn and look at her until they both reached the world of the living again. Upon finally reaching the exit to the underworld, Orpheus, seemingly beset by anxiety and doubt, believing that Eurydice can’t possibly be behind him, turns around, sees her, and watches as she disappears.
Bird uses the story here as yet another example of the ways in which humans have coped (or not coped) with the idea of dying; refusing to admit that it’s a possibility and then desperately seeking some way to avoid it when it arrives. Bird further looks at this theme on the album’s book-end pieces “Three White Horses” and “Beyond the Valley of the Three White Horses.”
Bird begins “Three White Horses” by singing, “you will need somebody when you come to die” and finishes it by changing the lyric to “you know I won’t be needing somebody when you come to die.” I don’t know of any mythology relating to three white horses specifically, other than that white horses are generally the steeds of heroes and saviors. Here Bird seems to be contemplating the idea that someone preparing to die will be looking for a savior but he, in the face of imminent death other than his own, “won’t be needing somebody” quite yet.
This song is also something of a callback to “Desperation Breeds,” the first song on Break It Yourself. In that song, Bird sang “We keep breeding desperation/ In this era of thieves/ Who keep stealing respiration/ From the tenderest of trees.” Clearly Bird has been thinking a lot about the cycle of life and death and the actions that humans take to come to terms with this inevitability. On “Three White Horses” Bird sings, “it’s not desperation we’re breeding/ it’s just a need we’re feeding/ before we say goodbye.” On Break It Yourself, desperation begets desperation and life begets life. On Hands of Glory, music begets music and death begets death.
The album ends with “Beyond the Valley of the Three White Horses,” a mostly instrumental nine-minute song that picks up where “Three White Horses” left off. The songs share musical cues and though it lacks narration, “Beyond the Valley” seems to sound like the character from “Three White Horses” following the trio of ghostly images to the valley and beyond to his or her final resting place. It’s a fitting way to end an album that seemingly seeks to soften the inevitability of death with the comfort that we can live on by way of the deeds we do while alive, whether by making music or becoming a malevolent souvenir.
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