Like a smoker fighting a fix, Andrew Bird likes to keep his hands busy. Nimbly plucking the strings on his violin, swinging a guitar into his ever-ready fingers or gently tapping a glockenspiel, he gives the appearance of a classical musician turned accessory-loving busker.

It was 2003's Weather System, a supreme juggling act of textured sounds and styles ranging from jazz to biting college-rock, that saw wild-haired Bird's intense, trembling vocal style draw comparisons with Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke. His new album, The Mysterious Production of Eggs, offers even stranger folk songs and apocalypse-obsessed lullabies, bursting with thrilling moments of poetry and wallowing in languid domesticity.

Bird's eccentricity is almost intimidating. "I don't know if you ever watched Sesame Street as a kid," he says, wide-eyed, "but this is the segment where the men come out of the letter 'I' and clean it."

Such bizarre comments are uniquely Bird, but his songs sound like reproductions of one idea; starting with almost identical violin melodies, they twist and turn like shaggy dog stories before sneaking up on us like practical jokes. Backed by Kevin O'Donnell on drums and keyboards, Bird whistles breezily through the drama, his voice gentle, his movements echoing the tense strings and guitars swooping around the homespun melody of Tables and Chairs or the stomp of MX Missiles.

When Bird plays A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left, he explains how he could feel "it" - the involuntary movement of the song - coming on during the plane trip from Paris. Watching him jolt and jerk to the wired, country rhythm seems almost exploitative until a sudden melodic grace offers a welcome breather. But the tic rarely rears its head again. When it does, Bird rolls his eyes theatrically, leaving us wondering if it's just another prop to keep us interested.