Andrew Bird has spent the last five months in Los Angeles. "I came here to have a nervous breakdown," explains the musician. "But I didn’t have one. So then I drove out to the desert. But that didn't work either. It's got to happen soon, though. I'm due for one."

Does he look like a man on the verge of a breakdown? Hard to say. He's beginning to look a bit like Beethoven these days; his hair is longer, his person in general more askew. He ambles onstage, wearing a red scarf and looking a little hangdog as usual, and starts his instrumental prelude quietly, toeing his shoes off to a few fond chuckles from the audience. The music he's creating sounds like it might be some amalgamation of something from 2009's instrumental Useless Creatures blended with whatever it is he feels like playing on the spot.

From there he plays a new song called "Breeding Desperation." After finishing, he stops and stares out at the audience. "Is that some loop I made?" he asks. Faintly, some sort of classical music can be heard somewhere outside—or inside the theatre. "Is that… Bach?"

Bird tries launching into "Why?" but is distracted, and says so. Several audience members—including Junkmedia—slip out into the lobby to tell whomever it is playing this music to shut it off—but the staff outside are bemused, shaking their heads. The music clearly isn't coming from the lobby.

Back inside the theatre, Bird is doing his best to play his usually amusing "Why?" but is clearly having trouble focusing on the song. After he's finished, a staff member forcefully barks at the audience: "Does someone have a phone on or something?" (Obscenities omitted.) There's a scuffle in the small performance room, and a door opens and slams shut—it's not clear what's happened exactly, and we are all left confused.

"So," ventures Bird. "Anyway."

From there, it becomes clear that this isn't your usual Andrew Bird show; this is an experiment. The new songs are loose and not-quite-figured-out-yet, with in-progress titles "Parthenogenesis," "Give It Away," "The Near-Death Experience," "Lusitania," and "Whistle Aria," the latter being not so much a song as a wordless, whistling wander through Bird's creative process. He shrugs noncommittally after it's finished, and contrary to what his low expectations for crowd response may be, the audience roars with applause.

Bird has brought out the members of his opening act (Alpha Consumer) plus a friend of his from Chicago named Matt Weber. The three extra performers add tambourines, guitar, and drums to Bird's tunes, and in the small red-curtained theatre there is this feeling that we—the audience—are voyeurs in what is a very intimate and playful reunion of old friends, playing just for the sake of the sound of a pick scraping across gleaming guitar strings.

"All right," says Bird, quietly, and the audience laughs. There’s something about his modest way of speaking that is inherently funny, his nonchalance strikingly ironic after performing these breathtaking melodies he's created. "Now it's time for some old-timey music."

And it is, true to his word, good old-fashioned old-timey-sounding music, certified by the introduction of a banjo onstage. They play "Headsoak" off Bird's 2001 album The Swimming Hour, followed by another old gospel tune that the performer has previously been fond of playing, "Trials, Troubles, Tribulations." As one has come to expect by this point in the show, he pulls it off brilliantly.

After playing Charlie Patton's "Some Of These Days," Bird bows, and the band exits the stage, only to file back on almost instantly to launch into the gorgeous "Spare-Ohs" from the conclusion of 2007's Armchair Apocrypha. A couple more songs, and the band leave the stage for good this time.

Later that night, in a courtyard tucked away just off La Cienega Boulevard, Andrew Bird mingles with friends and fans, and he seems different from the man this Junkmedia contributor met over a year ago. He is calmer and more open, smiling as he chats with the people who've just experienced something stunning with him. He seems adrift, much like his new songs, which are all very dreamlike and somewhat ghostly-sounding, and yes: Perhaps they do sound like a man in search of a breakdown. But knowing Andrew Bird, if he does find the temporary collapse he seems to be longing for, it will be wholly beautiful.