You Should Know
Portland, Oregon's Neal Morgan plays drums and sings background harmonies for psych-folk chanteuse Joanna Newsom and he's set to self-release his first solo album, with distribution from robust label Drag City, entitled To The Breathing World on October 20. So you're thinking "hmm, solo album, probably some dude with an acoustic guitar"... wrong. Neal's album consists entirely of his voice and his drums, nothing more. Such a venture could go two ways: painfully pretentious or excitingly original. Thankfully, the latter is the case. Morgan's voice is just as dynamic an instrument as his feral, fitful drumming is. He layers and folds his voice onto itself, creating intricate, otherworldly harmonies. There's a celebratory aesthetic sheen on To The Breathing World, and Morgan's lyrics have an abstract, childlike quality even when he's singing about loneliness and isolation. On "Despair," Morgan sings over a booming drum beat: "Art is not a freezer/ Music is not a bruised body." Much of the album is filled with similarly vague yet poetic sentiments, but when taken as a whole, what initially seems to be a non-sequitur jumble of words transforms into something holistically poignant. To The Breathing World plays like a love-letter to the natural world and all the sadness and ecstasy it entails. -- Capt. Obvious
10.07.2009
Neal Morgan
at 11:39 AM
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1 comments:
Hello there Captain Obvious! Although I completely agree with your description of Morgan's vocals, for they most definitely are interesting, the matter concerning the degree of pretension is where we hold our differences....painfully would be the appropriate word.
It always seems somewhat unfair to compare an artist's solo work to that of the artist with whom they were previously affiliated. In any case, somehow this album lacks the charm and modesty that makes Joanna's music so enchanting.
It definitely deserves at least one good listen...who knows maybe it'll grown on me.
Anyway, thanks for the review!
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