Kevin Morby
Still Life
WOODSIST
6/10
In a seemingly constant transition from one tour with this band, to moving across the country for that band, it’s curious that Kevin Morby would give his sophomore offering such a static title. Even the Woods-bassist-turned-solo-artist has admitted to its irony. However, there is something intimately routine to his colorful and expansive Still Life. Perhaps it’s his reliance on familiar characters of love, death, and the unavoidable hand of destiny, or maybe it’s that Morby is so accustomed to movement in his life that his most cohesive work is born out of progression. Whatever the reason, Still Life is an elevated continuance of the signature spirit that defined 2013’s Harlem River. Morby paints his melancholic tracks with hopeful instrumentation, never neglecting to thread in the surprise of a smoothly crooning saxophone or an interjecting bass drum pulse. While its title may hint at a bow towards sluggish and stale, Still Life is anything but.
