Ilithios - Every Bird Ever (2024)

The challenges of our generation feel amplified and the lines of reality and hyperbole are beyond blurred. So many things feel out of reach. Will I find love, will I find a home, will I die before I’m ready? This is an album that attempts to capture the feeling of confronting impossibility with reckless optimism. Embracing sadness, imperfection, and joy equally.

This is the second record by Brooklyn based ILITHIOS (idiot in Greek). The significance of birds, which appear throughout the record in field recordings, artwork, and lyrics, is their symbolism as free beings, bringers of luck, healing, but also as tragic figures. Magpies in some cultures are revered, whereas in others they are a nuisance, or pest… and therefore exterminated. Other birds are misunderstood, the Coucal builds nests with grasses believed to have medicinal qualities.. So people will go to the nests, break the legs of the nestlings in order to get the parent Coucal to bring this supposed medicinal grass to be harvested and sold. By giving meaning to nature, we both mytholigize birds, and devastate them. If you examine birds enough.. as with any object, person, or animal, you can find the parallels to our own lives. But not cats, they make no sense.

The record includes many guests from the New York City music scene to give different voices and life to the songs