Andrew Bird’s Break It Yourself continues the balancing act that he has carried on for much of his career: celebratory, upbeat music paired with lyrics that drip with heavy subject matter.

“I’ve been playing around with that before I started making records — the lightness and the dark,” Bird says. “I think that dark on dark is kind of boring, but the juxtaposition is what we call melancholy. That’s the basis of most music, really. I’ve always liked that contrast