John Moreland – LP5
Thirty Tigers/Old Omens – 7 February 2020
Following the one-off release of Big Bad Luv via 4AD, Moreland now fetches up on the perhaps more appropriate Thirty Tigers for, as the title makes plain, his fifth album. Again he’s pushing his musical frontiers with further experimentation as a result of his first experience of working with a producer, Matt Pence, who also provides the drums, encouraging different sonic choices and textures, especially in terms of percussion, yet without losing sight of his core sound.
Opening with the line “all the gods are watching wars on television placing their bets and telling jokes about religion”, Harder Dreams sets the standard with one of the best things he’s written, a meditation on identity where he sings “I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me/And you got ads to sell, so you tell me that’s who I need to be/But what good is a letter in a language you can’t read” while harmonica wails, flute flutters and Pence’s quirky use of percussion crackles in the background.
That same static-like effect is applied on the slow-burning bluesy prowl of A Thought Is Just A Passing Train with John Calvin Abney on wurlitzer and clavinet, a song stalked by worry and doubt (“when you feel your weakest somebody knows your name”) but where he rejects getting caught up in the chaos, declaring “shame is a cancer, go easy on your heart”.
Anchored by organ chords and a yearning chorus, East October is poignant song of loss written for and about his late singer-songwriter friend Chris Porter who was killed in a car crash in 2016, the title nodding to Porter’s East December, Moreland’s voice cracking as he asks “how am I ever gonna get by all by myself?” The guitars shimmering, Porter’s also the subject of In Times Between, written shortly after his death “swimming in the seas that are streaming from my eyes”, as, couched in a wistful love song, he sings “if the body had the strength of the spirit, you’d be here and we’d drink out in the parking lot, and then you’d disappear”, although that last word fades away before it ends, followed by a brief silence before the song resumes.
Will Johnson on backing vocals Learning How To Tell Myself The Truth again addresses self-acceptance (“when you look into my eyes/Do you still see a soul you recognize/ These golden gods keep telling me their lies/But I just wanna be true”) and features one of several great Moreland lines in “Talk is cheap, but man, so are we”.
The airy acoustic picked Two Stars is one of two instrumentals, the other the penultimate chirping electronic trills of the piano-based For Ichiro, setting the scene for Terrestrial where, to syncopated drum beats and piano chords, he again rejects the self-loathing and self-abasement that characterized many of his earlier songs, remarking how “As a child, I repented my nature, till as a man, I repented my past” and, as the title suggests, he’s earthed, finding glory in singing hallelujah.
The first verse written shortly after they started to date, the rest three years later, after several numbers talking of isolation or loss, When My Fever Breaks is a love song for his wife that rides a rippling drum machine and a dreamy calypso-like melody as he croons “darlin’ when you reach for me/it feels just like infinity”
The final two songs seem to work as a complement, the first, with more scratchy percussion, being the musically woozy I Always Let You Burn Me To The Ground (“my long lost revival withered up in the adolescent sun”) with what seems to draw on crop imagery, balanced by the closing plea of the reflective but also forward-looking strum and harmonica of the Springsteen-tinged Let Me Be Understood (the title a riff on The Animals’ 1965 hit) where “I used to walk around with shackles on my hands back when I still needed you to tell me who I am” but now “I feel sure-footed, hope I’m going somewhere good”, ending with “I’ve been restless, and I’ve been unwell/But I have a heartbeat, and a trial to tell/You can sentence me to burn, if you feel that you should/Let the clock hands turn and turn, let me be understood”.
A terrific piece of work that is his most musically complex and lyrically personal album to date, it confirms his position as one of today’s great singer-songwriters. On In Times Between he sings “we needed holy answers, we needed tougher words”. This supplies both.