Left of the Dial
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Tracy Morrow & The Magi Chippie: Someday You Will Find a Home
by Mark Norris
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Someday You Will Find a Home
Tracy Morrow &
the Magi Chippie
Someday You Will Find a Home
(Headless Actor)
Listening to Tracy Morrow’s last CD, Morning Is the End of the Day, conjured a dramatic impression of eavesdropping. On that record, Morrow’s dissection of old loves, old friends and old troubles so intensely took its subject matter to task that one was left with the overwhelming impression of having listened in on a church confessional, being a fly on the wall at a 12-step support group’s breakthrough meeting or being on the receiving end of a suffering lover’s voicemail lament. In short, Morning Is the End of the Day made Bruce Springsteen’s stark masterpiece Nebraska sound like “Walking on Sunshine.”
Never fear, Tracy Morrow—the nom de plume used by Buffalo-based vocalist/guitarist Bill Nehill, “due to insecurity issues” according to his myspace page—has not dropped his demons on his new effort, Someday You Will Find a Home. Instead, the songwriter has draped his tortured tongue around eight new paeans of mournful melodies, songs that bear witness to several hundred sleepless nights logged since Morrow’s last “diary entry.” Lest the reader be concerned over value for their dollar, those eight tunes clock in at a staggering 43.5 minutes.
As was its predecessor, Someday was recorded by soundboard maestro Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago. This time around, Nehill is accompanied by the Magi Chippie (guitarist Dave Gutierrez and bass player Tom Dagonese). The quiet dynamics added by these sympathetic conspirators brings an impressive new dimension to the songwriter’s “intricate sad stories” (copped from the song “Please Don’t…”). Gutierrez and Dagonese deliver intricate acoustic guitar, acoustic bass and backing voice accompaniment to Nehill’s requiems, fleshing out the spare song structures. At times, Nehill’s fragile vocal delivery recalls both the soaring falsetto of Neil Young and the gravelly baritone of Leonard Cohen. The Magi Chippie respond to both voicings in kind, playing delicate lead lines and near-whispered backing vocals as the songs dictate.
While sonically sweeter than Morning, the subject matter of the songs on Someday hasn’t gentled one whit. “Cold Silver Necklace” is a point-blank indictment of a first love who has gone on to grow up by rejecting “the dream that you have come to hate/but for the rest of your life you will so hopelessly chase,” and the stunner “Dual Diagnosis” is every bit as haunted as its title implies. Yet it’s not all dour doomsdays on Morrow’s new record. While the bulk of the record possesses a worldview that could be described as bleak at best, the album’s last track, “All That I Have…” turns heart-worn resignation into a virtue.
If there is any justice in this world, Someday You Will Find a Home will be hailed as a breakthrough recording in the genre of the new weird folk movement.
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