How do you relate to Kevin Morby’s music if you’ve never even been to the Midwest? So much of the singer-songwriter’s work is beloved for its sense of place; I tend to appreciate it because it never seems entirely tied to a single one. Even as he delivers his most settled and, by all accounts, most Midwestern album to date, Morby’s life is split between Kansas City and Los Angeles, as he and his partner, Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, are expecting their first child. Tour has always been a kind of home to them both, and Morby’s discography offers a taste of different parts of the US: an hour in NYC, another in Memphis, and then you’re off to the next city. In the past decade that I’ve been aware of his music, his albums have never found me in the same place, and I doubt the next one will. Little Wide Open, in its grand simplicity and cautious optimism, doesn’t cling to Middle America as a nostalgic signifier but mines its abundance of imagery, honouring a beautiful region you can drive through but will always ride passenger to time. It’s the same where you are; Morby just makes the truth easier to embrace.
1. Badlands
“Don’t underestimate midwest American sun,” Kevin Morby sang at the heart of 2022’s Sundowner, “Try as you might but you will not outrun the burn.” The sentiment isn’t too far off from the one that opens Little Wide Open, except the looming sense of oblivion doesn’t shrink down his songwriting; “Heaven is a place on Earth” and “the sky expands and you and I expire.” Morby doesn’t sound irreparably alone here – he’s even got Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon mimicking the tornado siren for the listener’s sake, plus sweetening backing vocals from Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath and burbling lines from Aaron Dessner.
2. Die Young
In a committed relationship, the fear that one partner will pass on first isn’t irrational – it’s a certainty that can unnerve the most contented souls. “I know that it’s going to hurt if I get there first,” Morby bellows on the opener, but on the following track, he offers a pact: “Let our songs build rooms in time/ And see to it that if we die young/ I’ll live on through you/ And you’ll live on through me too.” Grateful to have replaced the “if” with “that,” he lets fear out the back door.
3. Javelin
Morby is preoccupied with “everything ending now,” but his backing band sounds raucous and radiant, setting him loose as Meath’s melody is traced by electric guitar, synths, and horns. Andrew Barr’s drums are especially prominent, reinforcing Morby’s troubadour affirmations.
4. All Sinners
Over cloudlike percussion, Aaron Dessner’s subtly warm contributions have a clarifying quality: when Morby sings of a wind in the distance, Dessner seems to calculate its force. It gives the album’s most illuminating couplet the space to breathe: “If time plays tiny violins then we play symphonies through the centuries/ And if time is a violent ride, then we ride passenger.”
5. Natural Disaster
If the first four songs swell with gratitude, ‘Natural Disaster’ gives way to the burden of insecurity, voiced by none other than Lucinda Williams in a brief but sobering spoken-word bit. When the natural metaphors dry up and the pictures don’t do his inner world justice, Morby’s current of words succumbs to plain emotionalism, which works wonders. Oliver Hill’s strings rush in to animate the ghosts Williams warns of, then gladly fold into tears and laughter.
6. 100,000
The song might as well have been left on the cutting room floor were it not for Meg Duffy of Hand Habits, who thunders in with a guitar solo (backed by their Perfume Genius bandmate Tim Carr on drums) that’s especially funny after an unexpected Metallica reference.
7. Little Wide Open
The feeling of smallness may recur in Morby’s discography, but it’s rarely sounded so epiphanic. The title track stretches on for a solid eight minutes, each musical layer – from Katie Gavin’s backing vocals to Mat Davidson’s fiddle to Collin Croom’s pedal steel – sliding in as a gentle affirmation. It’s no surprise the album’s centerpiece is an epic paean to vulnerability, but its most disarming lines are also its most humorous: “Humiliate me baby, fuck me up bad/ Drag all our secrets like cats from the bag/ Use all our insides to decorate the parade.” At every turn, the promise of drifting off into solitude belies the thrill of companionship; and within the dream of eternal anonymity hides the kindness of those named in the credits and beyond.
8. Cowtown
The simple camaraderie between Morby and Dessner shines on ‘Cowtown’, which credits just the two of them. In fact, Dessner is content to let himself drift in the background, as Morby creates the illusion of being alone with his guitar in a chuckle-inducing meta moment. Little Wide Open may be a sprawling album, but it’s in these lonely little moments that his longing for escape really resonates.
9. Bible Belt
The record’s lonesome stretch continues on ‘Bible Belt’, an unassuming highlight that honours the highway’s liminal spaces. Morby’s wordplay is comforting more than just clever: “Life on Earth may take some time/ And you can’t avoid a void so wide.”
10. I Ride Passenger
The album was almost called I Ride Passenger, and the song’s central idea – when it comes to the passage of time, we’re all in the same boat – still reverberates through the record. Here, Morby brings it to life by making the fiddle and piano, instruments that carry weight lyrically, feel like the main players while he takes the back seat. But the sad and familiar song he makes them play harbours memories of home, which smells like cinnamon and roses and motor oil. Then it slows down, turning slightly ominous, “Cause time is a violent driver.”
11. Junebug
It’s still a wonderful ride, though. ‘Junebug’ buoys the record’s dark, sinister edges with a lovely melody, adorned by Tom Moth’s harp as Morby’s morning bird meditations return to the purity of childhood.
12. Dandelion
Morby’s vignette-like lyricism crystallizes on ‘Dandelion’, but the image that jumps out to me is that of friends writing songs about butterflies, which sets up the final track.
13. Field Guide for the Butterflies
Field Guide to the North American Butterfly is a vintage book Morby stumbled upon at Dickson Street Books in Fayetteville, Arkansas; he repurposes the title as if grateful to have found a better word for sensitive types than “wallflower,” addressing those of us who clam up against the conquering vastness: “Can’t be too brave out there, beneath the sky.” But you still have to muster some amount of courage in a world where death is not always natural, which is why the stereotype of sitting against the wall feels unsuitable. And you still have to be grateful: “Thank God that we didn’t die young/ Flying over highways like we weren’t butterflies,” he sings near the start of the album. Morby hatches his metaphors early; we just get to watch them grow.
