Kyle Morgan – Younger At Most Everything (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 51:28 minutes | 530 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Team Love Records
Younger At Most Everything, coming to Team Love Records February 25th, 2022, is a collection of deeply personal songs that reads like a map of Morgan’s spiritual evolution. From child of evangelical Christianity to existentially paralyzed adolescent, drunken romantic to neurotic but industrious artist, Younger takes listeners on a bumpy journey through the badlands of self-doubt, fear, repression, and near-despair, charting the ongoing, non-linear path towards healing.
“This song came from the belly of the whale which was my 2020,” Kyle explains. “I’ve struggled with OCD since I was 13, and the pandemic combined with the death of my dad triggered a spike in symptoms like I hadn’t experienced since my teenage days. ‘Fight’ arose like a message from a more evolved, future self, asking me to trust my innate capacity for recovery.”
Kyle’s father, who suffered from a rare, degenerative neurological disorder, is the subject of the album’s opening track, “And You”. Embedded in a lush arrangement of string quartet and finger-picked guitar, Morgan’s contemplative vocal gradually unveils a loving relationship marked by both joy and grief. Through an unwinding series of lyrical impressions – images, smells, sounds, memories – Morgan paints a singular portrait of fatherhood and family that transcends his particular experience: “Pockets full of watermelon Jolly Rancher wrappers / Beach volleyball / And all the games I never really wanted to play / But did anyway.”
Threads of meaning and narrative are consistently entangling and unraveling as Morgan explores varied shades of personal growth and desperation through song. The ambitious and highly imagistic “Ransom the Captive Heart” pushes the boundaries of linear lyricism, while painting a crystalline impression of the compromises of modern existence: “It’s a tragedy that’s played in two parts / Act I: sell your soul to feel free / Act II: buy it back at an outrageous fee.” Songs such as “Broken Love”, on the other hand, like a classic country song, discern wisdom in the mundane.
The album’s title, a mishearing of Gram Parson’s 1968 classic “Hickory Wind”, marks Morgan’s place in the history of American musicians who have blurred the lines between traditional and modern. The sparse, mostly acoustic arrangements, featuring fingerstyle guitar, pedal steel, pump organ, and Morgan’s earnest tenor voice, clearly reflect a deep love for classic roots music such as The Carter Family, Mississippi John Hurt, and The Louvin Brothers, while taking on the melodic inventiveness of such modern greats as Rufus Wainwright and Ron Sexsmith.
Tracklist:
1-1. Kyle Morgan – And You (06:10)
1-2. Kyle Morgan – The Seedling (04:24)
1-3. Kyle Morgan – Tara (03:05)
1-4. Kyle Morgan – Know No More (03:55)
1-5. Kyle Morgan – Deer In the Pines (04:14)
1-6. Kyle Morgan – Woman (04:21)
1-7. Kyle Morgan – Momma Take My Hand (06:57)
1-8. Kyle Morgan – Broken Love (04:05)
1-9. Kyle Morgan – Do You Still Have Some Fight In You (03:58)
1-10. Kyle Morgan – Ransom the Captive Heart (06:58)
1-11. Kyle Morgan – Something Younger (03:15)
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