If there were a collective appreciation of dramatic album intros of the year, then Babylon (self-released June 5th), the latest offering from The Huntress And The Holder Of Hands, would definitely be a big part of the conversation. Like a film where the opening shot is a post-apocalyptic barren landscape, smoke from a recently grounded fighter jet still billows, fragments of civilisation lie broken and motionless, nature fights back amid scattered rubble, and, above, a clear blue sky appears impossibly tranquil and unattainable. Then heaving into view comes a solitary human frame, still very much alive but lost, lonely and desperate among the overwhelming destruction that surrounds. That very place, or at least a personalised assimilation of it, is where this album drops us with the opening bars of Promethean. We first encounter an aching female voice singing unaccompanied of a blinding experience, then a menacing pulse enters the mix as an oppressive scenario unfolds before our ears. Every moment of this introduction adds worryingly bleak elements to the scene, like a watchful eye from a distant tower, although an absence of wrecked vessels and vulture-baiting carcasses is also noted. Then we hit the line that cracks this tragic shell wide open, “I search, but there’s no sign of you,” which precedes the eruption this song has been building towards. The stumbling, lurching beast of a tune that follows is a vivid, thumping, evocation of an inner trauma dealing with personal loss and the battle of continuing to live and make sense of it all. “Step back heartbreak, what else is there beyond?”
Those difficult to rationalise human traumas are at the core of this album and, as is so often the case, they are born out of real life, dealing the artist an impossibly awful hand. A decade on from losing her husband and Brown Bird bandmate Dave Lamb, MorganEve Swain has carried that absence like a live current through her work, and the practical function of Babylon in 2026 is to present the sound of that long, private reckoning finally breaking the surface. The Huntress and Holder of Hands was born from that devastation, but this new record shows how grief has changed shape over the years from the raw wound of 2014 into an expressive beast that has a questioning, analytical hunger for answers, unafraid to revisit memories and, above all, move forward. The songs here trace that evolution with unflinching honesty. We feel in these audio brush strokes how the flickers of hope that kept MorganEve moving now fully embrace the compassion that grew in the cracks. You can hear her still drawing from that well of loss, but this record transforms it into a communal interpretation; we are reminded that mourning does not diminish with time so much as it becomes a force that binds, steadies and ultimately propels her toward a fuller, fiercer sound.
There is also a collaborative seed present here, born out of circumstantial necessity in some instances. The past five years have been showered with stories of lockdown-induced creativity, and still, the harvest from that dark season brings tasty produce. Emily Dix Thomas contributes songwriting with Rocky Coast, while the wider ensemble of Liz Isenberg, Christopher Sadlers, Joel Thibodeau, Penn Sultan, Matt Swain and former bandmate Rachel Blumberg, all help shape the record’s broader emotional terrain. The album even folds in a lyrical nod to the late Dave Noyes of Seekonk and Rustic Overtones, an understated gesture that enhances the sense of lineage and shared memory running through the project. Babylon is a vivid, heavily weighted folk-rock charge of an album, but as it moves into the final stretch, the mood begins to tilt upward. Their live take on Brown Bird’s Bildgewater brings a rough-hewn buoyancy, evocative of the communal spark that first bound these musicians together, while Beasts We Are pushes that momentum further, its warm insistence nudging us toward something brighter, like a comforting arm around the shoulder in song. Together, they open a small window of light after so much ciphering, underscoring the record’s central truth that even in the thick of grief, we retain the power to choose compassion over collapse, renewal over ruin, and to keep rewriting the story rather than surrendering to the tide. As the violin waves of Thunderstorm elegantly sail the album to shore, the overriding impression is that of a simultaneously moving and epic musical excursion.
Babylon (June 5th, 2026) MorganEve Swain