I read an interesting thought about In The Throes, the new album from John Moreland, that made complete sense even on my first few plays through. “John Moreland is a songwriter’s songwriter” said Nine Bullets, “So what makes these ten songs so great? I’ve had the record over a month, listened to it dozens and dozens of times and I don’t have an answer. There are incredible lines throughout.”
I am paraphrasing here but the sentences above capture exactly what makes the record so great. In The Throes is a collection of songs that play like perfect short stories, writing that has been mercilessly editted and revised so that each and every word has been forced to justify its existence. Each song feels distilled, reduced to its purest and most brilliant form.
The real masterstroke is putting together all of these killer lines and making them fit together into something that sounds like a stream of conciousness, as if they are the words of a man spilling his inner self for the first and only time. The songs are simultaneously highly polished and roughed up, carefully crafted and organic.
As for comparisons, I guess you can take your pick from your favourite songwriters. The slower finger picked songs such as ‘3:59AM’ bring to mind Joe Pug, and Nine Bullets suggested Townes Van Zandt (with which I concur), but there are plenty of others you could name too. Nebraska-era Springsteen, Jason Isbell, Steve Earle, Tom Petty… Moreland is in no way out of place among any of the gravely poets that make up the big names of songwriting.
The whole gamut of emotions are covered on In The Throes, from sadness and desperation (I swore the days were over, courting empty dreams / I worshiped at the altar of losing everything) to earnest joy (I got the guiltiest conscience / Listening for a savior on a Saturday night / I got my ear to the ground / You got Easter Sunday in your eyes) and even humour (I guess by now, I’m supposed to be a man // But my grandmother still gives me ten bucks on my birthday). Some artists make songs that are made memorable by just one masterful line, John Moreland produces songs with masterful lines as his only ingredient.
You can buy the album from Last Chance Records.