{"id":30300,"date":"2019-11-20T14:30:55","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T19:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=30300"},"modified":"2019-11-28T14:11:14","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T19:11:14","slug":"playing-the-bay-morning-hands-get-mystical-on-new-lp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/playing-the-bay-morning-hands-get-mystical-on-new-lp\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning Hands Get Mystical on New LP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/morninghands.bandcamp.com\/\">Morning Hands&#8217;<\/a> self-titled LP sounds as though someone\u2019s Dungeons and Dragons wizard character made an \u201880s synth-pop version of his spellbook.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Maybe that&#8217;s a bombastic statement for the opening sentence of a review, but once I got to track four, \u201cMoving Through Water,\u201d I knew my initial inklings were correct; the whole album shimmers with folkloric mysticism, from the chorus of opener &#8220;Santa Fe&#8221; to the final track\u2019s <em>Stranger Things<\/em>-esque opening riff.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Morning Hands\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/album\/0MIrE7loi9itdKycb87w2l?si=BHKeGG63QeCgnbIXO13feQ&#038;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The former (<i>I let the right one in\/before the meal could be finished) <\/i>had me wondering if Patrick Tabor (vocals and lyrics) and Douglas Du Fresne (music) were purposefully referencing the 2008 Swedish romantic horror film <i>Let The Right One In, <\/i>or, possibly, if they were paying homage to Elijah, every Jewish kid\u2019s favorite Passover visitation. Such is the power of synth-pop: it can pull from a variety of inspirations beyond the obvious without sounding like the music version of a Scholastic<i> I Spy<\/i> book. It can inspire the sci-fi scaries just as easily as it can the <i>aww shucks <\/i>goofiness of literally any \u201880s teen TV show.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">This is why albums like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/interview-charly-bliss-eva-hendricks\/\">Charly Bliss\u2019s <i>Younger Now<\/i><\/a> can exist in tandem with Morning Hands&#8217; self-titled without one seeming like the \u201cright\u201d way to use a synth, and why it (hopefully) appears to me as if more pastiche-loving bands have started to gravitate towards synth pop\/rock as opposed to psych rock (please god).<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cMoving Through Water\u201d gleefully leans in to the fantasy analogies, with a verse that accuses some unknown enemy of <i>scanning every angle from your teeth to your claws\/the corners of your mouth reveal your sinister plots. <\/i>The chorus is delivered with a little less of a wink, but still uses similar inspiration to explain the discomfort of seeing someone\u2019s betrayal coming a mile away (<i>I know I sense what\u2019s been gathering around me\/It feels like a curse from another century<\/i>).<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cGagged and Bound,\u201d a standout from the second half of the album, feels like the song two storybook children would sing before encountering a witch while skipping through the woods.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Tabor\u2019s voice is at its best here, switching seamlessly from sing-song (<i>a cut of life too big to fit\/your little hands in oven mitts<\/i>) to a growly troll-under-the-bridge moment during the song bridge. Its bouncy-ball synth backing affords the last few songs of the album the energy it needs to end strong, though \u201cGagged\u201d and \u201cI Wanted You\u201d are more of a power duo than anything, making closer \u201cWorld of Color\u201d seem like the odd one out even if, thematically, it makes sense to end an album so concerned with metaphor and mysticism on more of an introspective note.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cI Wanted You\u201d is one of the most straightforward songs on the album in terms of lyrics \u2014 the title itself is pretty self-explanatory \u2014 but a little breather from the more overt fantasy elements was necessary, I think, to keep the LP from slipping too far into concept or one-off territory. And the song still brings forth some great lines without it (<i>we\u2019ve both been so wrong\/some forces just can\u2019t coexist\/now I\u2019m disgusted\/that I\u2019ve let it come to this) <\/i>that are elevated by Tabor\u2019s self-aware delivery that never shies away from wringing every emotional shift he can from a single rhyme scheme.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">All in all, whether this was a fun lyrical experiment or just the lens through which Tabor sees the world, the album is cohesive, atmospheric, and most of all fun, a triumph in any genre. Plus, the album art is \u2014 and there\u2019s no other way to say this \u2014 sick as hell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Morning Hands&#8217; self-titled LP sounds as though someone\u2019s Dungeons and Dragons wizard character made an \u201880s synth-pop version of his spellbook. Maybe that&#8217;s a bombastic statement for the opening sentence of a review, but once I got to track four, \u201cMoving Through Water,\u201d I knew my initial inklings were correct; the whole album shimmers with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":30320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7851],"tags":[9331,4108,990],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/0017628616_10-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30300"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30443,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30300\/revisions\/30443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}