Photo: Daniel Shea

The Goodbye Party reckons with the fading past on “Unlucky Stars”, announces album

The Goodbye Party is a Philadelphia-based project helmed by Michael Cantor who last put out an album in 2015, but will be releasing a follow up called Beautiful Motors on October 9 through Double Double Whammy. It was recorded with Kyle Gilbride of Swearin’ and boasts a boat load of guests including Maryn Jones (Yowler), Sam Cook-Parrot (Radiator Hospital), and Joey Dubeck (Pinkwash, Downtown Boys).

The first song to be shared from the upcoming album is “Unlucky Stars”, which Cantor says “deals with the impacts of loss and memory. Loss in terms of other people but also one’s former self. I’d been reading Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas and at one point, an old sea captain has this dream of being underwater and all his old drowned sailors visit him. It felt like a good metaphor for how it feels to meditate on things and people that you miss while trying to escape the weight they carry.”

“Unlucky Stars” is a perpetually moving and rumbling indie-rocker, transporting Cantor’s uncertain thoughts forward while he struggles to look back. The Goodbye Party keep the song building and growing, until it reaches its crunchy and cathartic peak – and then collapses back into the human and heartfelt core, Cantor having learned his lesson: “I paid for every good day with a night beyond control / telling me that forgetting is not the same as letting go.”

The Goodbye Party’s new album Beautiful Motors comes out through Double Double Whammy on October 9. Follow the band on Bandcamp and Facebook.