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MAJOR MURPHY

Major Murphy

Access

    Jacki plays bass and sings in Waxahatchee’s band. Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, who wrote the album bio, describes lead single 'Access' as “a conduit for the grand and complex structures Bullard builds throughout the album. It’s as much a personal plea for patience and humility as it is a pep talk for setting the bar high and working hard to ascend.”

    Access, the second album by Major Murphy, out April 02, 2021 via Winspear, is an album born out of being at a crossroads. It’s also, without question, an album to blast at an unruly volume to soundtrack an experience one might have standing at that crossroads. It’s remarkably cohesive - a striking relic in an age where ardent and true “album-making” is a fading art form full of heavy rock’n'roll sounds and textured atmospheres fused with pro-idea, hyper-creative jittery warmth. In nine songs, it somehow takes a listener backwards and forwards at once, reckoning with intrinsic anxieties while conceptualizing a fantastical and vibrant happening, soothing in its familia familiar, occasionally childlike tone.

    Behind the sturdy and poetic architecture lies a story of new parents, navigating uncertainty and seeking a sense of agency in the new unknown. Throughout Access, songwriter Jacob Bullard recounts memories of teaching his young son to breathe through his nose and laments missing his son and his partner and bandmate Jacki Warren.

    On “In the Meantime”, Bullard expresses the timeless anxiety of recent parenthood, written in the wake of the terrifying experience of their son suffering from lead poisoning. While the title track “Access” is as much a personal plea for patience and humility as it is a pep talk for setting the bar high and working hard to ascend. Together with Brian Voortman and Chad Houseman, the Grand Rapids, Michigan four-piece makes a laudable case for pushing forward against a pervasive resistance. Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee).

    TRACK LISTING

    1. Access
    2. Attention
    3. IntheMeantime
    4. Unfazed
    5. Real
    6. Rainbow
    7. TearItApart
    8. Flower
    9. Blind

    Major Murphy

    No. 1

      Major Murphy is set to release their debut full-length No. 1. Those who caught feelings for “Mary,” the plaintive single released in November of 2017, may be pleased to find that the single is no outlier in this album. Brimming with jangly guitar, bright riffs, synth-sheened grooves, and commanding backing vocals, No. 1 reimagines 1970s radio rock with bristling sensitivity for our present era. Not quite pastiche, the lyrics of songwriter Jacob Bullard come from millennials’ unique cache of societal anxiety and ego-crises. On one hand, the technicolor and mechanized world of No. 1 is unmistakably ours: we are over-stimulated and pressured, confused and frustrated. On the other, Bullard heaves up worries seeded in adult selfhood and relationships, working for answers beyond life’s many brief and manic vanities.

      The album’s musical sensibilities catch all this with A-side’s sudden velocity and mechanical repetitions, and B side’s encouraging grooves and contemplative soft-rock. The sound is rich and evocative, owing in large measure to bassist Jacki Warren’s faculty for harmonic structure. Drummer Brian Voortman’s keen responsiveness to melodic progressions and emotional shifts make for concert-like, energetic recordings--in fact, most of No. 1 was recorded live, capturing how naturally Major Murphy makes music together. When Major Murphy tours, they travel in a light-blue Dodge van and make a memorably caring and playful threesome. On stage, they’re a tight and assertive performance.

      “This album is kind of an experiment,” says Bullard, “We wanted to see what would happen if we recorded in a studio instead of at home. We wanted to extend the idea of capturing our live dynamic a little further.” The result is an album that holds the kinetic charge of these three musicians. With precise control and live versatility, they never quite let the tension out. Even their dreamy soft-rock tracks have moments that feel utterly urgent, as if something dear were at stake. And isn’t there? 

      TRACK LISTING

      1. No. 1
      2. Who I Will Be
      3. Mary
      4. Radi-Yum
      5. My C. C. Blues
      6. Step Out
      7. One Day
      8. Jesus
      9. When I Go Out
      10. Lisa, Robbi, And Me


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