Bird Log V. - Autumn 2025
Howdy folks.
On my walk home from work last night, I got our first little taste of winter. The drizzling North Atlantic rain slowly, imperceptibly shifted to ice; by the time I turned the corner up my street, I was treated to the delightful sound of ice pebbles falling onto dry leaves.
I actually like November, and I find the post-peak foliage times to be some of the sweetest of the year. The air is so clear and crisp right now, and I can sit here by the office window and watch the crows foraging for some late-season seeds. This year, we’ve got even more to look forward to.
Our sixth album Goodbye, Babylon releases next week, on November 20th. Pre-orders are up on our Bandcamp page, and pre-order sales will benefit our local food pantry. There’ll be a little release show at Dwyer’s Pub in our hometown of Portsmouth, NH on release night, where we’ll be singing and playing alongside our friends Berm and Happy Just to See You. We’ll be running a can drive for the same food pantry - bring some non-perishable food to the show and you’ll get a place in our merch raffle.
In addition to CDs, we’ve got a new zine out. “A Little Grief in the Gallery” contains lyrics and notes from Goodbye, Babylon, as well as some extras and the newest version of Bird Friend Bingo.
We hope you’ll enjoy the new record; it’s been our labor of love this year, and we think it’s something real special. From “A Little Grief in the Gallery”:
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.
In the meantime, we’ll talk about what we’ve been listening to. Bandcamp has been the service of choice over here at Bird Friend HQ, and it’s led us back to a few classics from our youth, such as Mallory’s To The Hollow Night, a freak-folk classic from the dark woods of Western Massachusetts, circa 2014. New discoveries include Canary Records’ When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time, a fantastic compilation of war-era gospel music, and The Heat Warps, the newest record from UK faves Modern Nature.
We hope your holidays are humble, and that you stay warm. We’ll check in over the winter.
-Bird Friend
