Good Morning share rule-breaking new album Barnyard
RELEASED VIA GOOD MORNING MUSIC COMPANY WORLDWIDE / VIRGIN MUSIC AU/NZ + POLYVINYL ROW
| PRAISE FOR GOOD MORNING “The prolific Melbourne duo level up on new album Barnyard” NME “Everything’s looking good for Good Morning” Billboard “The music has the easiness you feel looking out at the ocean” Broadsheet “Chill and organic indie rock, but there are some slight stylistic differences due to each member taking lead vocals on some Lennon-McCartney shit…” Stereogum “Country feels like the culmination of everything that Good Morning have spent their almost-decade together working towards” Rolling Stone “The Australians are coming out in full force” Paste Magazine “These are warm, inviting songs made for long drives on sunny afternoons” Frankie Magazine “Gloriously catchy dessert rock” Pilerats |
Mavericks, iconoclasts and renegades are all words to describe Good Morning, energised and invigorated on their new album Barnyard. As friends first, band second, business third, often in spite of function, Liam Parsons and Stefan Blair today present their latest record together with a couple of incidental and accidental, self-imposed rules broken. LISTEN TO BARNYARD HERE.
Barnyard is Good Morning at their most meditative, thoughtful and careful in its evocations – their catchiest too. It’s a world-weary record concerned with the state of things in a loose, unfocused sort of way, like many who are also frustrated both with the way things are and with everyone’s general inability to fix any of the many issues endemic to our society, complete with everything we’ve come to know them for – drone synths, ambient sketches and country ballads with their token sense of humour. Every time the machinations of the industry have zigged, Good Morning have zagged and it’s probably why people like them so much. Barnyard, however, proves just how serious their craft has been all along.
Recorded for the first time in a long time with the help of an outside engineer and released on a label that’s not operated by a friend, what you now hear on Barnyard is exactly what was laid down in that first spell of recording. From demo’s tweaked gently in the lead up to a lengthy American tour, Liam and Stefan decided to go back to basics, recording as they had prior on Shawcross and Glory, as a duo again. Decamping in Chicago at Wilco‘s famed studio, The Loft, they found not only more gear than they could ever want or need, but also a kindred spirit in the studio’s in-house engineer, Tom Schick. Credited as their guiding force, Schick became a close accomplice, enabling that same ethos of the records past that continue to breathe through The Loft‘s walls – to make first, and break apart second.
Including the previously released, part Tweedy, part ‘Taxman’ piano ballad ‘Burning‘, a scathing address to climate inaction; the rousing appeal to return to a simpler time in ‘Country‘; and the groovy, power chord laden ‘Depends On What I Know‘; are new features including ‘Big Wig // Small Dog‘, a takedown of the generally useless and pigheaded ego’s who parade through life and the music industry; a recount of bellyache inducing love on ‘Tree‘, the kind that sees one overcome with a desire to do literally anything for their lover; and a considerate reflection of vices in ‘Green Skies‘, to name a few.
Although those seeking grand reinvention or earth-shaking hubris in Barnyard will come up short. This is an album of good, well-made, finely-written songs, notable for its purity and coherence of vision, but not by any means a concept album; it is a record significant in Good Morning’s history, but not one with such self-importance that it would consider itself historically significant for all. That is likely what those drawn to it will love about it. Barnyard is not too little and not too much. It’s just right – just Good Morning.
Barnyard LP is out now, buy/stream it here.
TRACKLIST
To Young To Quit
Depends On What I Know
Wahlberg
Yng_Shldn
Matthew Newton
Tree
I’ve Been Waiting
Burning
Big Wig // Small Dog
Never Enough
Green Skies
Country
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| ABOUT BARNYARD Thoughtful, catchy, idiosyncratic, and nearly twice the average length of their back catalogue, it’s all the things one might love about Good Morning, this time around presented with the fat trimmed and the edges sharpened. Recorded at Wilco’s famed studio The Loft, for the first time in a long time the record was made with the help of an outside engineer and will see an international release on a record label not operated by a friend, but instead, Polyvinyl, joining the likes of Alvvays, Julia Jacklin, STRFKR, Kero Kero Bonito and joining the ranks at Sub Pop Publishing. ahead of Barnyard’s official release, Good Morning have accumulated international acclaim from the likes of Rolling Stone, NME, Stereogum, The Line Of Best Fit, Consequence, Alt Press, Paste, DIY Mag, Music Feeds, The Music, Northern Transmissions, KCRW, 6Music and many more, including a warm embrace across local community radio stations Triple R, PBS, FBi Radio, 2SER, Edge Radio and SYN, together with New Music playlist support upon release across DSPs, alongside tastemaker editorial. |