Review Summary: 1) Reads album title, 2) Dusts off Chad Kroeger impression
Kevin Morby has had an interesting career trajectory. A former member of the psych/folk band Woods, he went solo about a decade ago, releasing two competent folk records before gaining a larger audience with his third LP, 2016’s
Singing Saw. Featuring more adventurous instrumentation than your average folk release,
Singing Saw was catchy and broadly appealing, standing as one of the genre’s more memorable efforts in some time (not to mention being an essential entry in the Sowingcore canon). After that, though, Morby’s next three albums never reached the same heights. Indeed, they never tried to, seemingly leaning into an easy-going, middle-of-the-road folk sound. This doesn’t mean that the artist’s career suffered though, as he continued gaining greater prominence. After all, if you think you’ve never heard Kevin Morby’s music, you might be wrong. He’s that guy serenading you from your living room TV on the next Airbnb commercial.
This Is A Photograph feels distinct from the (largely) milquetoast stretch of the singer-songwriter’s career which followed
Singing Saw. This isn’t because it’s a markedly better album overall (see the middling score affixed to this review), but simply because it at least aspires to something more. Press around the album focuses on how the music explores themes of life, death, and history inspired by concerns for the health of the artist’s own father, as well as Morby’s recent time spent in Memphis, a city marked by repeated tragedies.
This Is A Photograph is indeed dominated by those ideas, and it’s a record which frequently seems on the verge of great success (as Borat might say). Ultimately, though, it doesn’t all come together, leaving a finished product roughly equivalent in quality to the less-ambitious three albums which came before it.
The title track, which marks the album’s true beginning after a short and rather unnecessary interlude, forms a good baseline for understanding this LP. The song ponders a picture of Morby’s dad, in younger years, against a backdrop of his modern-day issues. Strong lyrical imagery like “now time’s the undefeated, the heavy-weight champ” lays the groundwork for an epic album exploring age and decay, both on the personal level and on a national scale. This sort of thing isn’t unique, sure, but it could be pretty compelling in the right hands. Unfortunately, though, that hope for a coherent masterpiece withers by the end of the tune, with Morby shouting over and over “this is what I’ll miss about being alive, this is what I’ll miss after I die”. It’s frankly rather irritating, and demonstrates a frequent problem which blights this album, and has cropped up on several of his recent albums as well: while there are some wonderful lines here, some of the lyrics are pedestrian, and often it’s the pedestrian lines which are repeated like mantras. In a genre like folk, lyrics are important, even if Morby’s evocative voice can frequently allow the listener to ignore some mediocre lines. The effortless profundity he brings to a tune vocally is a double-edged sword, though. Feel free to listen to “Wander” from Morby’s 2020 effort
Sundowner, in which the singer recites third-grade level poetry in a tone which suggests he believes he’s uncovered the meaning of life. To be fair, nothing on
This Is A Photograph is as galling as that example, but the weakness is still present.
The next few songs which follow are the album’s strongest stretch: “A Random Act Of Kindness”, “Bittersweet, TN”, and “Disappearing”, wonderful folk cuts (the last rather bluesy) with themes of aging and the passage of time. They don’t represent the album at its most ambitious, but these tunes are warm and well-crafted. The record’s second half, meanwhile, is much more of a mixed bag. There’s the heavier “Rock Bottom”, which definitely comes across as a failed experiment, juxtaposed with the beautiful “Stop Before I Cry”, a love letter to partner Katie Crutchfield (of Waxahatchee fame).
Discussing closer “Goodbye To The Good Times” is an appropriate way to end this review, as it encapsulates both the appeal and the failures of this album. Singing about his father getting Mickey Mantle’s autograph, Morby draws deep from the well of Americana lore, musing (close to cliche, but appealingly nonetheless) that “they just don’t make ‘em like that no more”. Later on, though, the song devolves into a repeated line “sometimes the good die young, and sometimes they survive”. While there’s nothing untrue about that statement, it’s mundane enough to make me wince, and forms an appropriately unsatisfying ending to an album which seems to often bite off more than it can chew.
This Is A Photograph is an album which aims for an impressively grand vision, but rarely hits the mark. In its less grandiose moments, though, it’s frequently successful, providing the listener with a number of lovely folk tunes.
