OR   Search for Artist/Title    Advanced Search
 
you are not logged in...  [login] 
All Reviews    Edit This Review     
Review: 'MORBY, KEVIN'
'Singing Saw'   

-  Label: 'Dead Oceans'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '13th April 2016'-  Catalogue No: 'DOC111'

Our Rating:
Kevin Morby cut his teeth as a bassist with Indie folkies Woods and co-front person of The Babies with Cassie Ramone of The Vivian Girls.

Now following his own creative muse, his third solo album was conceived following a move to hilly neighbourhood of Mount Washington in LA.

Produced by Sam Cohen and recorded in Woodstock, New York, it is described as having been "written simply and realized orchestrally" and it is easy to imagine the nine tunes starting life as stripped down acoustic tracks.

However, three female backing singers, occasional strings, sax and trumpet expand the folky template to something approaching a full band sound. Cohen contributes by playing guitar, bass, drums and keyboard.

Like Kurt Vile and Ariel Pink, Morby's songs are self-consciously post-Dylanesque in which images of fallen angels and "transcending time and space" (Ferris Wheel) vaguely suggest the notion of following, or straying from, a spiritual path.

Feelings of being "empty like a room" (Drunk And On A Star) enter the desolate domain of Leonard Cohen without ever being as visionary.

Flights of poetic fancy, as with "the winged horses we once rode" of Black Flowers tend to fall a bit flat but thankfully the more earthbound perspective of songs like Cut Me Down and the title track are less pretentious.

Morby mostly sounds deadpan and droll but when he casts off his earnest inclinations he manages to break free of the introspective boundaries. The funky gospel elements of the album highlight - I Have Been To The Mountain - are positively joyful while Dorothy rocks out convincingly.

Ultimately, there is sufficient of this kind of affirmative energy to give a sense of hope rising from the general despondency.
  author: Martin Raybould

[Show all reviews for this Artist]

READERS COMMENTS    10 comments still available (max 10)    [Click here to add your own comments]

There are currently no comments...
----------



MORBY, KEVIN - Singing Saw