GURF MORLIX
Finds the Present Tense
Rootball 06261 36998

www.gurfmorlix.com
 

As the title suggests this is not a bright, sunny set of songs. Gurf Morlix’s ten songs here are nearly relentlessly dark slices of life. Recorded at Gurf’s own Rootball Studio in Austin the album has a spare sound with nothing extra, nothing that really doesn’t need to be there.

As always, Rick Richards plays the drums. Ian McLagen, Nick Connolly and Patterson Barrett split duties on B3 organ while Gene Ellers adds fiddle and Ray Bonneville harmonica. Gurf plays everything else. The luminous Eliza Gilkyson adds vocal harmonies.

Gurf lets the songs take leisurely paces the best to let the dark scenarios unfold. These are truly visual songs like little films noir. Usually their protagonists are at odds with the world, poor fits in difficult situations. Gurf’s gruff voice is a perfect instrument to convey their despair, their failures, their grim hope in the rare cases they have any of that precious stuff. Nowhere is this more vivid than in the title track “Present Tense” in which Gurf limns a circle of friends who don’t really seem to like each other very much. Happy endings don’t interrupt the darkness in the songs. But the folks populating them have not given up. They seem intent on slogging through whatever mess they are in. Mercifully “Empty Cup” closes the set on an upbeat note, a reach for rapprochement.

I have followed Gurf Morlix closely since I first heard him playing with Lucinda Williams and producing her eponymous breakthrough album. I have watched with delight as his songwriting has gotten ever closer to literature. Finds The Present Tense is a haunting set that in its apparent simplicity is deceptively deep and complex.

— Michael Tearson