Good Morning

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. 

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.