#jefre cantu-ledesma

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Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Gift Songs

[iamlisteningto]

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s Gift Songs

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help me pick a sketch to make into a final band poster 💖

[musicmovesmarceline]

jefre cantu-ledesma, “the milky sea”

[knightofleo]

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma | Love's Refrain

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Tarentel - When We Almost Killed Ourselves (1999)

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[sinceileftyoublog]

Julie Byrne Album Review: The Greater Wings

(Ghostly International)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Albums billed as being shaped by grief often don't follow linear rules, or at least a perfect pipeline of death to grief to songwriting. Famously, when Jeff Tweedy sang, "Tall buildings shake / Voices escape singing sad sad songs," on "Jesus Etc.", released in 2002, many listeners thought the line to be about 9/11, even though Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was finished before the attacks. More recently, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' Skeleton Tree hit shelves after his son Arthur tragically died from a fall; during its recording sessions, Cave amended many of the album's lyrics, which had been initially written by the time his son passed away, but to this day we don't know exactly what changed. On the title track to singer-songwriter Julie Byrne's new album The Greater Wings, she declares she will "name my grief to let it sing," rendering that grief a living, breathing entity, almost a character in the album. Halfway through the making of the record, Byrne's creative partner Eric Littmann suddenly passed away. After shelving it for six months, Byrne completed the album with producer Alex Somers, her first time in a conventional recording studio. The result is a stunning canvas of reflection on things that are no longer for this world, from people to relationships, filtered through Byrne's blue-colored glasses.

Really, a more apt timeline for comparison to The Greater Wings is Bell Witch's Mirror Reaper, an album that acts as a tribute to a former member while including documents of their physical presence, more living artifact than ghost. On Mirror Reaper, it was the late Adrian Guerra's voice; here, Littmann's synthesizers shine throughout the record, like his arpeggios harmonizing with Marilu Donovan's harp on "Summer Glass" and his wobbly instrumentation on "Conversation Is A Flowstate". To see how Byrne and Somers owned the material from there is breathtaking. It's hard to remember that before her previous record, Not Even Happiness, Byrne was a DIY folk singer. That album's glassy closing track "I Live Now As A Singer" not only informed The Greater Wings' expanded aesthetic, but it's proven to be a total turning point in Byrne's career. The production flourishes and additional instrumentation on The Greater Wings are sometimes subtle, but they move mountains. Synthesizers shimmer alongside acoustic guitar on the title track. Somers' backing vocals on "Portrait Of A Clear Day" nestle among Byrne's lead vocal turn, Donovan's harp, and Jake Falby's strings. "I get so nostalgic for you sometimes," Byrne sings, her hazy memories perfectly contrasting the crispness of the music.

In fact, contrast is a defining feature of The Greater Wings. On emotional centerpiece "Summer Glass", Byrne's words consist of recollections of specific moments in time ("You lit my joint with the end of your cigarette," "The tattoo you gave me lying in bed"), all-encompassing devotionals ("You are the family that I chose"), and broad therapeutic goals ("I want to be whole enough to risk again"). Even the instrumental "Summer's End" showcases the tactility of Donovan's harp against the atmospheric wash of the synthesizers and echoing bells. And Somers added textures to Littman's initial work on "Conversation Is A Flowstate", making it a harmonic, yet percussive and conversational push-pull as Byrne recites affirmations: "Permission to feel it, it's alright / Permission to grieve, it is alright / Healing can be heartbreaking, it's alright."

Making yourself "whole," or as close to it as possible, is not an easy or definite process, in life or in music. Even on a song like "Flare", Byrne goes through multiple so-called "stages of grief," including bargaining and acceptance, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's modular synth buoying her words. The Greater Wings, then, is as close to universal art as it gets, a treatise on the human penchant for imperfection, for being naturally unable to fully appreciate something while it's there. "I tell you now what for so long I did not say / That if I have no right to want you / I want you anyway," Byrne sings with smoky heartbreak on "Lightning Comes Up From The Ground", a title that makes literal what happens when an event in your life shakes you to your core: It turns your world upside-down.

[total-derangement-of-the-senses]

Song of the Day

17 Apr., ‘25

[album-a-day-project]

4/7/25

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma

Gift Songs

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Ambient album focused around the first track, The Milky Sea, which runs 20 minutes. When the quality is this high it doesn't matter the run time. It's a very smooth piece, it makes me feel really melancholy and indifferent, but that's not a bad thing. There are points where I think that it's missing something, but overall its a lovely piece.

AAD Recommends: 80%

[maquina-semiotica]

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, "White Dwarf Butterfly"

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Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Gift Songs

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has long been a vital resource for celestial sounds, but the multi-instrumentalist may have outdone himself with the 20-minute opener on his new Gift Songs LP. “The Milky Sea” unspools majestically over the course of side A, Booker Stardrum’s steady, rolling percussion the only thing keeping us tethered to the earth. Rippling like a gentle wind through a sail, this is incredibly graceful music, like a collab between Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou and Jon Gibson — ambient music that isn’t placid, but somehow always shifting and transforming, oceanic in scope, but radically intimate as well. After the sublime main course, the remainder of the album is a necessary comedown, culminating in the rich, immersive “River That Flows Two Ways,” the aural equivalent of a deep, cleansing breath. What a gift.     

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