Good Grief by Magic Al was Originally conceived as a response to the heavy loss of loved ones, is an ode to endurance by way of joy-making; to dancing as a target and a cure. To create his 9-track cathartic dance party. The group’s Alex Bingham enlisted a group of friends and songwriters for the project, including Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath, Caamp’s Taylor Meier, Mountain Man’s Molly Sarlé, Rosali, and Mipso’s Joseph Terrell and more.

In 2022, Bingham was blindsided by the deaths of his best friend, his aunt, and his college roommate within the span of a few months. As death has a habit of doing, these losses set his heart to questioning many things that had formerly felt concrete. He realized it had become harder to find the passion for music-making he’d once considered intrinsic. Searching for a new orientation, he turned to his inner child and began the recording experiments that would become Good Grief.

Many of the tracks sprouted from the sense of a memory of his best friend, John, or his Aunt Angie which Bingham would then try to blow up to the scale of a song. He recalled John’s love of strumming along to CCR or Neil Young songs and found moments to lay breezy acoustic guitar over his stoner-ABBA beats. In this way the record-making served as a personal process of memorial, and beyond that a way to bring his living musical compatriots into a kind of togetherness with his lost loved ones. Throughout Good Grief, you can feel Bingham’s yearning to bridge the divides between dead and living, between profundity and lightness, between mourning and dancing.

Over the last decade, Bingham has become a well known bass player–and producer in the world of folk and indie rock, collaborating with Hiss Golden Messenger, Beth Orton, or Watchhouse, or heard his studio piloting of records by Libby Rodenbough and Lou Hazel.

Alex Bingham on “Party For One”:

“Party For One” pulsates with the hormonal moodiness and longing of an unrequited teenage love story paired with a nostalgia-soaked prom. Bingham collaborated with Lou, who sings the lead vocal, to write the lovelorn bop based on Lou’s third wheel high school prom experience. “I never even tried to write this song,” Lou explains. “It was already written by a tiny boy riddled with acne from a diet of coca-cola and square pizza,” he continues. “He’s still in me,” Lou shares, “jumping for attention in Adidas shell tops, trying to get me to look him in the eye. Magic Al summoned him with a disco ball and a prayer in his studio, and we both set him free.” Bingham called on world-class keys player Ariel Pocock, guitarist Chris Boerner (Hiss Golden Messenger) and percussionist Chris Gelb to continue building the track. The addition of background harmony by pop queen Amelia Meath (Sylvan Esso, Mountain Man) is the icing on top of the dreamy, indy-dance anthem Bingham and Lou sought to create. “It’s been a song I can pull up on a hard day to find my groove again and remember the feeling of being at a school dance or celebrating my friendship with Chris,” Bingham reflects.