Goodbye, Babylon by Bird Friend

The songs of Goodbye, Babylon take place on the dim periphery of Boston, in a twilight New England of crumbling millyards and foggy coastal marshes; in the incandescent, rain-soaked streets of faded towns; on blustery beaches in autumn, in the cathedral forests of summer, in the raw and haunted spring; in the falling dark of winter and the midnight hush of hometown dive bars.

This is a New England of myth, where the cycle of rain and the ancient flow of water erode everything, making even the most recent history feel primeval. It’s a New England of memory, where ancient roots grow through city sidewalks, ghosts gather in the architecture and the farmers’ fields grow gravestones.

But it’s a real place, too; our home - where we live, work and sing our songs.

There’s not much of a musical tradition out here anymore. Finding ourselves at the end of an era of history, standing on the threshold of an unfamiliar new world, we’ve picked up whatever scraps of song we can find. On Goodbye, Babylon, we’ve gathered echoes of folk songs, barroom waltzes, psychedelic dirges, church singing and the the ramshackle fanfares of high school marching bands. We’ve gathered stories of our lives, our love, our fears and forebodings at the end of the days of grace.

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Bird Friend is a weird folk band from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. DIY since 2013.

Geoff Himsel, Carson Kennedy, Andrew Eckel, Josh Lang, and friends.

birdfriendmusic.com