You’ve been framed
Seventh LP from Mr Waxahatchee sees life flicker by in a series of exposures.
Kevin Morby ★★★★ This Is A Photograph DEAD OCEANS. CD/DL/LP
BUDDY HOLLY, Terry Allen, Bobby Keys, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy… when they make ’em, in Lubbock Texas, they break the mould, or else, mislay it somewhere. Kevin Morby is in that lineage of one-offs – a singer-songwriter with a chewy, conversational voice whose albums range from velvety baroque pop (2016’s Singing Saw) to spectral campfire Leonard Cohen (cf. his last studio album, 2020’s Sundowner). If you’re not a fan, however, it’s possible you’ve thought him a tad affected, with songs like Piss River, from 2019’s Oh My God, that rhyme “castle” with “asshole”. And yet, when he pares down to the simplest statements, he can unlock a childlike directness.
This Is A Photograph also begins with a child’s eye view – the opening title track is inspired by a box of snaps Morby leafed through at his parents’ house on a day his father collapsed and was rushed to hospital – but this is an adult child, reflecting on what time gives and takes away, Morby’s ever-trebly guitar almost kora-like against a tumbling, West African-ish rhythm.
It’s typical, as it turns out, of a record that feels warmer, wiser and less forced than any of his albums so far, with Morby the singer finding a more relaxed delivery and Morby the writer looking out rather than in, searching for glimmers of light in a darkened world – like the sunrise he describes in the mantric, heart-swelling A Random Act Of Kindness (“Sun came up, with no plan”) – or accessing the stories of others whose lives, or deaths, he intersects.
The brevity of the human span is everywhere – in the time that slips by in banjo-driven Bittersweet, TN (“The living took forever but the dying went quick”) and in the ghostly presence of tragic Jeff Buckley in Disappearing, where Morby begs that we “please don’t go swimming in the Mississippi river”, before advising “Take off your jacket, and take off your boots”. Buckley’s there, too, in the sweet aching swoon of A Coat Of Butterflies, serenaded by Brandee Younger’s harp and caressed, in a surprise one-song cameo, by jazz drummer Makaya McCraven’s languid brushes. “Hey man, have you heard Buckley singing Hallelujah?” Morby asks, while his song reflects that there might be such a thing, after all, as immortality.
That makes the record sound draggy, but it’s not. Rock Bottom’s fuzzy glam literally laughs at life’s black comedy, and Stop Before I Cry is a transporting paean to Morby’s partner Katie Crutchfield, AKA Waxahatchee (“I know that you got secrets, and you know I got them too”), that’s clear about what makes life worth living. Several times, he turns to boxing for a metaphor. “Put some gloves on me,” he sings, and he’ll duke it out with time before, like Roberto Durán in that famous second fight with Sugar Ray Leonard, he says ‘No más’ – ‘no more’. Until then, he’ll be in there dancing, swinging.