Kevin Morby
Kevin Morby, Oh My God
With his four acclaimed solo albums and myriad records of
various collaboration, Kevin Morby has become a true musical auteur. His
singular vision, evocative lyrics, and aptitude for catchy, dense songwriting
has placed him firmly among the ranks of modern icons like Bill Callahan, Kurt
Vile, Sharon Van Etten, Will Oldham, and Jeff Tweedy. Each Morby record
possesses its own unique persona and explores intriguing themes and fertile
terrain through shifting, focused textures and dexterous, dedicated skill. And
now, with the lavish, resplendent, career-best double LP Oh My God,
Morby delivers a grandiose director’s cut of his biggest statement to date,
epic in scope as well as sound.
Throughout his past work, Morby has noticed the ubiquity of an
apparent religious theme. Though not identifying as “religious”, Morby—the
globetrotting son of Kansas City who has made music while living on both coasts
before recently returning to his Midwestern stomping grounds—recognizes in
himself a somewhat spiritual being with a secular attitude towards the soulful.
And so, in an effort to tackle that notion head-on and once-and-for-all, he sat
down in his form of church—on planes and in beds—and wrote what would become
his first true concept album. “This one feels full circle, my most realized
record yet,” says Morby. “It’s a cohesive piece; all the songs fit under the
umbrella of this weird religious theme. I was able to write and record the
album I wanted to make. It’s one of those marks of a life: this is why I
slept on floors for seven years. I’ve now gotten the keys to my own little
kingdom, and I’m devoting so much of my life to music that I just want to keep
it interesting.”
Morby admits he has viewed the world through a skewed spiritual
lens his entire life. As a kid he was told by his working-class parents that he
was a Methodist, though the family rarely if ever made good on that claim come
Sunday, and he saw fire-and-brimstone billboards on Kansas roadways with the
aim of scaring heathens straight. Despite his ignorance and indifference,
religion seemed to be everywhere, and as Morby grew as a musician—playing bass
for Woods, fronting The Babies, and with his solo career—he embraced its
influence with his work. In 2016, on the heels of a trio of
critically-acclaimed albums, he wrote the protest song “Beautiful Strangers”
about the devastating world events of that year, and in it he inserted multiple
“oh my god”s as pleas of desperation. The song became his most celebrated work
to date and the phrase became a mantra for Morby, inspiring him to weave the
exclamation conceptually into the fabric of an entire album. In effect, he
sought to highlight how that immortal turn of phrase embodies so much of our
relationship with the sacred and profane—how religion is all around us, always,
and that by simply uttering an OMG we enforce its ubiquity and ability to
endure while humanizing its reach.
“Religion is around all of us,” Morby says. “It’s a universal
language and there is profound beauty in it. I’ve found it a useful tool within
songwriting, as it’s something everyone can relate to on some level. There are
religious themes or imagery in a lot of what I’ve done, so I wanted to get all
of that out and speak only that language for a whole record. It’s not a
born-again thing; it’s more that ‘oh my god’ is such a profound statement we
all use multiple times a day and means so many different things. It’s not about
an actual god but a perceived one, and it’s an outsider’s view of the human
experience in terms of religion.”
In January 2017, preceding the release of his fourth solo record
City Music, Morby went into producer Sam Cohen’s Brooklyn studio for
four days to record a handful of material written with his usual
folk-meets-lo-fi-electric-guitar sound in mind. Cohen, with whom Morby made his
2016 breakthrough Singing Saw, had started recording the new songs with
a business-as-usual mentality when on the third day he was struck with an idea:
Rather than create what was becoming Singing Saw: Part 2, what if they
stripped everything back and instead of the entire Morby rock palette used only
a few colors at a time, focusing on Morby as hyper-literate singer instead of
guitar-slinging troubadour?
“Sam suggested that we make songs that sound like sonic pop-art
that only have a few colors, like a Keith Haring piece,” Morby says. “My other
records had tons of colors, so we decided to keep this stark, like a painting
that’s black-and-white with one vibrant blue. We went back to the drawing board
and thought about what we wanted to do conceptually across an entire piece. And
for the first time I could do exactly what I wanted, as I had time and the
ability to get everything precise. Sam encouraged me to let my lyrics sit on
top of everything else, and that discovery and the confidence that came with
making my fifth record helped me realize the new direction was exactly where we
needed to be. We opened it up completely and set out to make something in its
own universe.”
Over the remaining day-and-a-half, Morby and Cohen recorded new
versions of four songs—“Oh My God,” “No Halo,” “Savannah,” and “Nothing
Sacred/All Things Wild,” the latter becoming a mission statement for the new
sound and featuring Morby singing, Cohen playing a subtle organ part, and
Morby’s drummer Nick Kinsey on congas. Breaking the songs down into their
separate parts served Morby’s religious theme perfectly, as did the blueprint
of “Beautiful Strangers,” a song that would serve as a skeleton key of sorts
for everything that was to come. Over the course of 2017, he wrote an album’s
worth of songs modeled after “Strangers” while on tour.
As Morby jetted around the world playing shows, he came to
realize that all that air travel was making its way into his music, too. He had
always used his time in the sky to work on songs and listen to demos he had
recorded, but he began noticing an aero-dynamic emerging in his lyrics as well.
“Flying can be something of a religious experience for many people, myself
included,” he says. “It’s unnatural, and it can be so scary being that high
up—a few big bumps can even make an atheist pray. You’re anxious as you take off
and thinking about death, then you level off and suddenly you’re in this
kingdom above the clouds. There’s a holy feeling, and a big part of the
record’s theme is being above the weather. The first song, ‘Oh My God,’ starts
with chaotic hammering on a piano and then smooths out with a choir singing;
it’s meant to mimic how I feel on an airplane.”
All that flying also meant Morby was sleeping in a new place
each night, a situation he also learned to embrace creatively—most of Oh My
God’s songs were written from beds. Morby typically starts and ends each
day by playing guitar or writing songs while under the covers, a practice that
mimics prayer in myriad ways. “There’s something sacred about working from
bed,” he says. “It’s where you make love and where you dream. I always write
just before I go to sleep and right when I wake up. It’s where I can access
that feeling of dreams. Any bed is always a sanctuary, but my bed at home is
the Holy Grail.”
Morby sought to represent these sentiments visually for the
release of Oh My God. In addition to using a portrait of him reclining
in his own fluffy-white bed at home in Kansas City on the album cover, he also
worked with the filmmaker Chris Good on a short film to accompany the release.
The film stars Morby as he wanders through a dream-like series of encounters—on
planes, in cars, in a diner, at home in his back yard—and presents a
Gondry-esque vision of the album and its holy mood.
Meanwhile, in January of 2018, a full year after their initial
session, Morby and Cohen returned to the studio together to complete the
album’s recording. They fine-tuned the rollicking opening trio—starting with
the title track, then first single “No Halo,” and “Nothing Sacred/All is Wild”—
and played with various styles and techniques throughout. The ethereal
“Congratulations” was written in a dream, a first for Morby. (“Someone had been
singing the chorus to me over and over, and I woke up in the morning and walked
to my piano and wrote it then and there.”) “Seven Devils” features a ripping
guitar solo by Morby’s bandmate Meg Duffy that evokes a distorted hellfire, and
“Piss River” is a stream-of-consciousness, poetic and profound tune featuring
harp played by Morby’s friend Mary Lattimore while the singer has a
call-and-response conversation with himself. Saxophone duties throughout the
record were handled largely by Cochemea Gastelum, and a seven-member choir
appears as well. Morby directed Cohen in the creation of a track called “Storm
(Beneath the Weather),” a 90-second ambient instrumental piece made with
synthesizers to mimic what it can feel like under the clouds. “Above the
weather, you’re safe and nothing can get to you; it’s heavenly, like you
achieved peace,” Morby says. “Below that you’re subject to the insanity of
humanity, or Mother Nature. I wanted a weird, atonal sound on the record to
represent a storm, which feels in-line with the pop-art idea.”
“Hail
Mary” may be the album’s grandest moment and is recognizable as one of the few
guitar-driven songs that hearkens back to his previous work. Its heavy scope is
still apparent despite the fact that Morby and Cohen edited it down from its
original 15-minute-long, multiple-verse version into a concise five minutes and
three verses. And as the final song, “O Behold,” makes a familiar, just-in-case
farewell from an airplane seat (“If the plane’s on fire/know I love you”), the
listener can sense the credits rolling as the clouds begin to break, grips
loosen, and the kingdom comes into view. At 14 tracks and four sides, Oh My
God is an actualized concept album with a contemporary feel that is sure to
find itself on the shelf next to classic double-LPs like Blonde on Blonde,
Exile on Main St, London Calling, and Zen Arcade with its
maker planted firmly in a window seat at the front of the plane. Morby has
graduated from the DIY beginnings and warehouse shows of his early days to
become an admired, impassioned auteur who retains firm control of his vision as
his stages only continue to grow. “At the end of the day,” says Morby, “the only
thing I don’t want is to be bored. If someone wants to get in my face about
writing a non-religious religious record? Thank god. That’s all I gotta say.”
- Website:
- http://www.kevinmorby.com/
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