Jessi zazu bon full#
It’s lonely and a little weird, it’s touching, self-actualizing and full of personal confrontation and reconciliation. We spoke at length with the singer-songwriter about the benefits of regionalism, how Crutchfield helped inspire Sundowner, coping with loss, some sage advice from Kim Deal, and the wistful identity of Kansas City. | c ruddellĪD: Sundowner is the perfect record for this moment. Today, Morby releases his warmly reflective new album via Dead Oceans, an inviting look into a man faced once again with the intrinsic anxiety of the Kansas City night. The spirit of Sundowner fossilized in earnest. And for the first time in over a decade, Morby was confronted again with the cold midwestern sunset, but under new circumstances: The dawning of new love, the acceptance of profound loss, navigating an old life with a new set of eyes. Meanwhile, a blossoming relationship with Waxahatchee songwriter Katie Crutchfield unfolded amidst his self-isolation. He bought a Tascam 424 4-track and began recording the sparse skeletons of what would become Sundowner, his sixth studio album. Morby bought a little house in his hometown in the winter of 2017 and converted the shed in the back into a makeshift studio. Suddenly, the stillness of the midwest seemed appealing. The triteness of the music industry began to feel irritating. The excessive fun of the coasts and the unbound freedom of the road had proved difficult to maintain creativity and process grief. He lost another close friend, musician Jamie Ewing, and went through a messy breakup in Los Angeles. Musicians he grew to know and love, like City Music producer Richard Swift and Jessi Zazu of Those Darlins, passed away too young. The pitfalls of a rock and roll globetrotter were unveiled as Morby’s expansive life on the road flourished. 2017’s City Musicwas frisky and audacious the gospel of 2019’s Oh My Godplanted its reverent heels with a right hand reaching towards the heavens. The polarity of Los Angeles catalyzed his music the sprightly, self-assertive Still Life arrived in 2014, the brooding sprawl of Singing Saw following in 2016. Critics praised the album’s likeness to Bob Dylan and the freewheeling sound of mid-’60s electric folk, and Morby’s sound began to take shape. Harlem River, the songwriter’s debut as a solo artist, was conceived early last decade in Los Angeles, his ensuing homestead for several years. Contrary to the bucolic and claustrophobic midwestern dusk, New York pulsed with life under the moon, and Morby found his stride. The fledgling songwriter found creative cohorts all around the city, joining bands like Woods and the Babies as the daring noise of the “Brooklyn scene” slid onto iPods and late night television. So he took off for Brooklyn in the mid-aughts in search of something more.
It was a cold reminder that when night falls, there’s nowhere to hide, nothing to distract from yourself.
Unlike the energy beholden to New York’s midnight skyline or the headlight caravans along the highways of Los Angeles, there was something unsettling about the Kansas City sunset he reckoned. Before sojourning the coasts as a zealous 20-something, Kevin Morby was just another jaded high school kid looking for a ticket out of the midwest.
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