‘The Parting Glass’ Single Review: Boygenius’ Touching Goodbye (For Now)

Indie-rock supergroup boygenius released their cover of “The Parting Glass,” a traditional Irish and Scottish ballad, accompanied by Irish folk duo Ye Vagabonds. This single dropped a week after boygenius’s trio Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker received six Grammy nominations and starred as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live, less than a month after the end of their tour for their first full-length album “the record.” The traditional farewell song is the last known music that boygenius will release together for an unknown period of time, and as such is a fitting end to an extremely successful year.

Bridgers releases a holiday cover annually for charity and “The Parting Glass” is her seventh. Interscope Records and both of the bands are donating all net proceeds to the Aisling Project, an after-school intervention in Dublin for children and young people in need of support. The charity was chosen by the Sinéad O’Connor Estate, as the song pays homage to the late Sinéad O’Connor, an Irish singer, songwriter, and activist whose ability to both be a musician and stand for something she believed in inspired Bridgers, who paid tribute to the artist upon her death last year.

Throughout the cover, the trio trades verses typical to other songs in their discography. Bridgers’s airy mezzo begins, setting the melancholy tone for the song. With Baker and Dacus layering in below her, the intertwined harmonies create a texture that reminds listeners what’s unique about this trio: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In the second verse, Baker’s raspy voice is well-suited to the folk-music style, but the final verse leads to the perfect ending to the song as Dacus’ smooth and strong voice takes over in the final verse, sounding almost near to tears. The way that their three voices blend together evokes the track “With You Without Them,” the first song on their debut album “the record,” with which they started off each leg of their most recent tour by singing acapella into a microphone backstage.

The lyrics of this song are emblematic of the current state of their career. The song is often sung for and to close friends at the end of a gathering, combining joy and sorrow into a complex bundle of emotions that the group often evokes in their own lyrics. Bridgers’s opening line “Of all the money that e’er I spent / I spent it in good company” highlights the group’s deep friendship. The refrain and outro “Good night and joy be with you all” laments the goodbye, but sends everyone off in an uplifting manner. For a group whose songs are often based on their hard-hitting lyrics, it feels strange for them to not release a single with their own lyrics as a final song in this era, but this cover is so fitting that it almost makes up for it.

Accompanied by Ye Vagabonds, the raspy and haunting strings add to the heavier parts of the piece. Throughout the first verse, the pedal tones lay a base for the singing, but don’t add much to the music. As the accompaniment becomes more loud and full as the song emerges, the instrumentals help to build the mood of the song, and the quick music breaks in between the refrains and verses skillfully set up the transitions between lead singers. Compared to other versions of this song, this song is slower, softer, and even more melancholic, which combines boygenius’s sound with the sound of the more traditional music.

Although this track is nothing too exciting, the meaningful charitable tribute is a sacred goodbye, at least for now, for boygenius and the incredible year they have had together.