Kevin Morby’s latest album, Little Wide Open, is a widescreen hallucination of the Midwestern American soul. Put this one on at golden hour and watch your ceiling dissolve into the Kansas sky. This eighth album is a full-body experience—a slow-burning, emotionally luminous trip, and it might be the most transcendent thing he’s ever made.
Produced by Aaron Dessner at Long Pond Studio, the record has this enormous, breathing quality to it. Dessner doesn’t smother the songs in atmosphere but opens them up until you can see the horizon. “Badlands,” “Bible Belt,” “Cowtown,” “Junebug,” there’s always been something unintentionally musical about the Midwest— cicadas, passing trains, tornado sirens—and Morby channels all of it. “100,000” is a gorgeous, shimmering meditation on the anonymous lives unfolding in small towns along the highway, inspired by Tom Verlaine’s guitar work, with Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy unleashing an explosive solo at the end that feels like it was torn out of another reality. This is apparently the album ending the Trilogy of Sundowner (which I never gave a proper listen), and This is a Photograph (which was fine). But Little Wide Open is something special.
