Kevin Morby’s 8th album, ‘Little Wide Open’, will be released on May 15, produced by Aaron Desner. It is supposed to close the trilogy in the center of America undertaken by ‘Sundowner’ and ‘This Is a Photograph’, after the artist has moved to Kansas City. However, this album sounds different as it is more steeped in a stay in Los Angeles. They have also been inspired by Tom Petty’s ‘Wildflowers’ (1994).
The album has been featured in recent weeks by a single called ‘Javelin’ that we selected as “Song of the Day” for this Monday.
‘Javelin’ works on different levels. The first is through the joy that the melody transmits. It’s a song about being in love with someone with whom you can’t stop traveling around the world, traveling through the air and roads, even if it’s just to “then return home alone to the middle of the United States.” And no, it is not the first time that good old Kevin returns with a single that can even be described as “fun.”
The second level at which it works are those “eh, eh” catchphrases that act as complementary percussion for the song. They’re a trick we would have expected more from someone like Go! Team. And the third are the choruses of Amelia Meath (Sylvan Esso), who in the second part of the song manage to be the center, rather than an added detail.
Finally, in the video we see Morby and his friend Caleb Hearon in an SUV driving through the fields and back roads of Missouri, with cameos from Katie Crutchfield and Tara Raghuveer. “I think it captures all the fun we had creating it,” says the artist.
According to Kevin Morby’s own note, ‘Little Wide Open’ is set in “a context of tangled roads, towns with less than 100,000 inhabitants, crossroads, a rock and roll romance, butterflies in the stomach, being an American artist, Econoline vans and much more.” He adds that it is his “most personal and vulnerable” album, as Dessner has asked him to leave his “stories exposed.” Musicians such as Justin Vernon or Lucinda Williams will appear on the album.
Novelist Rachel Kushner, a friend of Kevin, has written an essay on ‘Little Wide Open’ called ‘The American Troubadour’s Field Guide’ that can be read online. We leave you with the tracklist of ‘Little Wide Open’:
1. Badlands
2. Die Young
3. Javelin
4. All Sinners
5. Natural Disaster
6. 100,000
7. Little Wide Open
8. Cowtown
9.Bible Belt
10. I Ride Passenger
11. Junebug
12.Dandelion
13. Field Guide for the Butterflies
