Andrew Morgan looks like the feckless young protagonist of a novel set in 1960s New England, all done up in a button-down and tie with a big, floppy mustache – not to mention his restless, Salinger-esque back story full of quirky characters and bouts of learning at various auspicious institutions. It’s tempting to check his elbows for tweed patches. Like his own wandering history, the stories of Morgan’s albums are swathed in drama and mystery.
Dreaming debut Misadventures in Radiology, an homage to the hypnotic continuity of late 1950s Cool Jazz and the kaleidoscopic invention of late 1960s British Pop, was recorded in Los Angeles at the invitation of the late, great Elliott Smith and called “a series of hypnotizing, mellifluous cinematic lullabies” by UNCUT magazine in its Best New Albums of 2004 list.
Please Kid, Remember, the Chicago-based second installment of Morgan’s “Exile Trilogy,” evokes cornerstone chamber pop albums like The Zombies’ Odessey & Oracle and Badly Drawn Boy’s The Hour of the Bewilderbeast, yet bears a scope of arrangement and diversity of instrumentation all its own. A collection at once familiar and thrillingly foreign – schooled in tradition yet celebrating imagination above all – Please Kid, Remember has been hailed by The Guardian newspaper as “a breathtakingly beautiful work of baroque-pop wonder.”
Grey Light of the Season supplants the widescreen sweep of Morgan’s previous output with a new music in miniature. Kindred in spirit to the darkly enchanted folk of Nick Drake and Nico, but wandering where it will, the Massachusetts-penned album is a work of suspended animation – a transportive Polaroid from autumn past and present.
Titled after a recurrent image in the writings of Dostoyevsky and taking up the author’s charge to “love every leaf, every ray of light,” Slanting Rays of the Setting Sun is a hymnbook to the pastoral and elemental. The album’s Summer of Love-inflected chamber pop is one of lightness – of love returned.
Along the way, Morgan has also released EPs As Long As We’re Together, Victory in Passing, Nocturama, Betweenlings, and most recently, Liminalia – a collaboration with his instrumental music project LYON.
Dreaming debut Misadventures in Radiology, an homage to the hypnotic continuity of late 1950s Cool Jazz and the kaleidoscopic invention of late 1960s British Pop, was recorded in Los Angeles at the invitation of the late, great Elliott Smith and called “a series of hypnotizing, mellifluous cinematic lullabies” by UNCUT magazine in its Best New Albums of 2004 list.
Please Kid, Remember, the Chicago-based second installment of Morgan’s “Exile Trilogy,” evokes cornerstone chamber pop albums like The Zombies’ Odessey & Oracle and Badly Drawn Boy’s The Hour of the Bewilderbeast, yet bears a scope of arrangement and diversity of instrumentation all its own. A collection at once familiar and thrillingly foreign – schooled in tradition yet celebrating imagination above all – Please Kid, Remember has been hailed by The Guardian newspaper as “a breathtakingly beautiful work of baroque-pop wonder.”
Grey Light of the Season supplants the widescreen sweep of Morgan’s previous output with a new music in miniature. Kindred in spirit to the darkly enchanted folk of Nick Drake and Nico, but wandering where it will, the Massachusetts-penned album is a work of suspended animation – a transportive Polaroid from autumn past and present.
Titled after a recurrent image in the writings of Dostoyevsky and taking up the author’s charge to “love every leaf, every ray of light,” Slanting Rays of the Setting Sun is a hymnbook to the pastoral and elemental. The album’s Summer of Love-inflected chamber pop is one of lightness – of love returned.
Along the way, Morgan has also released EPs As Long As We’re Together, Victory in Passing, Nocturama, Betweenlings, and most recently, Liminalia – a collaboration with his instrumental music project LYON.
All releases available via Cosmic Trigger.
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