John Moreland - LP5 (Album Review)

LP5 is the record John Moreland almost didn’t make.  Having released his first four albums to much acclaim in just a six year period, he started to feel the pressure of having to deliver the goods.  He needed time to learn to love his songcraft again and by giving himself the freedom to experiment without expectation he finally relocated his mojo.  Now, three years after 2017’s Big Bad Luv, he has emerged with a new record that is - among other things - brittle, beautiful and brave.

The fingerpicked guitar and gravel vocal of opener ‘Harder Dreams’ is a song for our age, peppered with flashes of existential torment: the state of the world, regret, growing old.  The close-miked vocal instantly brings to mind Springsteen’s Devils and Dust record but there’s a warmth to Moreland’s scratchy baritone that’s also in line with Bruce Cockburn and Darden Smith.  What gives the track - and indeed much of the album - an edge, however, is drummer Matt Pence’s inspired production.  The record is peppered with snatches of sampled guitar and piano, and skittering, off-kilter drums which give LP5 an identity far beyond the folk-roots nuclei of the songs themselves.

This experimental sonic framing continues through the spaced-out blues of ‘A Thought Is Just a Passing Train’ which is slathered in vocal effects and a clavinet wig-out of Donald Fagen proportions before the mournful ‘East October’ unfurls its singable but inexorably sad gospel chorus.  The frank ‘I’m Learning How To Tell Myself The Truth’ has further echoes of Springsteen in its execution but from a songwriting perspective has more in common with Patty Griffin at her most world-weary.  Likewise, the desolate ‘I Always Let You Burn Me To The Ground’ is another study in tenderness and truth on which Moreland’s vocal is perfectly paired with that of bassist Bonnie Whitmore.

John Moreland photo credit: Crackerfarm

Instrumental pieces ‘Two Stars’ and ‘For Ichiro’ serve well as palate cleansers through the record - the former a cheerful but scruffy sketch for two acoustic guitars while the latter in its ethereal, bleepy chaos, a distillation of Pence and Moreland’s experimentation with samples and effects. 

LP5 is at its jazziest on ‘Terrestrial’, which is crowned by the joyous splashings of pianist Jon Calvin Abney, while the Bontempi beats that introduce ‘When My Fever Breaks’ see Moreland at his most intimate and fragile.  A couple of tracks remain, bones exposed, with just vocal and guitar - the delicate ‘In Times Between’ and the throwaway strumming of ‘Let Me Be Misunderstood’ - as a reminder of what is at the core of things but what makes this record shine is the inventive production across everything else.  That these understated, impeccably hewn songs aren’t at all obscured is the really impressive achievement here and if you, like me, often grow weary of Americana tropes, preferring your songs dressed a little more freshly, then LP5 could well be the record for you.

Review by Rich Barnard