The Goodbye Party is the project of Philadelphia’s Michael Cantor (who used to play with The Ambulars). Silver Blues, his first full-length album and following a split release with Spoonboy, is being released by the ever-brilliant Salinas Records (who also put out music by great bands such as Radiator Hospital, Swearin’ and Joyride!).
The album is a singular vision, a product of Cantor’s hard work during a year spent boarded up in a makeshift studio. The sound is difficult to define, sitting at a crossroads between introspective, lo-fi bedroom pop and catchy energetic power pop. We get the usual guitars and drums, but we also get samples and synths and orchestral strings, all melded together with the hiss and feedback of cassette tapes. This makes for a pretty eclectic record, no two songs quite alike.
This is nicely illustrated on the first two tracks. Opener ‘Heavenly Blues’ is slow and reserved and thick with background ambience, while the second track, ‘Crossed Out’ immediately clears the air, bursting onto the scene with a clean guitar line and heralding the record’s first does of indie rock. This eclecticism continues throughout the album. ‘I’m Not Going to Your Heaven’ is a lo-fi rock song with a slight psych swagger – something along the lines of the less raucous tracks on Titus Andronicus’s debut, ‘Bells Underwater’ is a short and sweet acoustic track and ‘Personal Heaven’ is all jaunty indie pop (akin to something by Telekinesis!).
My current favourite song on Silver Blues is ‘Louder Than Summer, which builds from sad and ghostly beginnings, adding thumping drums and building real emotional intensity. Check it out below:
<a href=“http://thegoodbyeparty.bandcamp.com/album/silver-blues” data-mce-href=“http://thegoodbyeparty.bandcamp.com/album/silver-blues”>Silver Blues by The Goodbye Party</a>
From that slow-build we get another complete change of direction with the chugging guitars and catchy power pop of ‘Disrepair’. Other standouts include ‘Funeral Season’, a super-melancholic dirge, with lyrics like, “I remember you in dreams / you and your twin were still alive / your voice still ringing out on the machine / remnants of a disconnected life”, and the stark and mournful closer ‘White on White’.
Despite the variation from start to finish, Silver Blues is a coherent, complete album that is very much worth your time. You can pre-order the LP nowvia Salinas Records or download it on a pay-what-you-want basis from Bandcamp.