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John Moreland w/ Chris Staples
Saturday February 3 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
$29.50 – $35.00
JOHN MORELAND:
DOORS AT 6PM / SHOW AT 7PM
INDOOR SHOW
FACEBOOK EVENT
SPOTIFY / INSTAGRAM
John Moreland doesn’t have the answers, and he’s not sure anyone does. But he’s still curious, basking in the comfort of a question, and along the way, those of us listening feel moved to ask our own.
“I don’t ever want to sound like I have answers, because I don’t,” he says. “These songs are all questions. Everything I write is just trying to figure stuff out.”
Moreland is discussing his new album Birds in the Ceiling, a nine-song collection that offers the most comprehensive insight into the thoughts and sounds swimming around in his head to date. A compelling blend of acoustic folk and avant-garde pop playfulness, Birds in the Ceiling lives confidently in a space of its own, enriched by tradition but never encumbered by it. The songwriting that has stunned fans and critics alike since 2015’s High on Tulsa Heat remains potent, while the sonic evolution that unfolds on the record feels like a natural expansion of 2020’s acclaimed LP5.
The New Yorker, Pitchfork, Fresh Air, Paste, GQ, and others have embraced Moreland’s meditative songs, while performances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, CBS This Morning, NPR Tiny Desk Concert, and more have introduced Moreland to millions. And yet, while the Tulsa-based Moreland is grateful for the respect and musical conversation he’s now having with people around the world, he is also more focused on the idea of just talking to one person– –or even himself. “Through the years, I’ve felt like I’m increasingly talking to myself in my songs, more and more,” he says. “Maybe in the past, I wasn’t aware of it, but now, I am. I think doing that has helped me be less hard on myself, which makes you more generous and compassionate in general.”
That helps explain why even if Moreland is reaching out to someone else, there is no judgment. “I’m in the same boat with whoever I’m talking to,” Moreland says.
Moreland’s songs do feel intimate––like overheard conversations or solitary meditations. “I want to talk one-on-one to someone in a song,” he says. “I don’t want to address a group, really, because I think that’s when it’s easy to start pontificating––and it gets less honest.”
CHRIS STAPLES:
SPOTIFY / INSTAGRAM
“Chris Staples is a gifted storyteller who reveals life’s greatest mysteries in humanity’s smallest moments.” – NPR’s All Songs Considered.
Cloud Souvenirs is the sixth full length album by American songwriter Chris Staples, ten songs spun from accumulated memory and flashes of insight into the hidden corners of life. Recorded in the midst of travel back and forth to Florida to deal with his mother’s declining health, Staples built an unselfconscious masterpiece, a cathartic and complete expression of his craft. Cloud Souvenirs is a parade of sculpted moments, some light and airy, some gray and heavy with rain– variations on beauty, tenderness, grief and unexpected joy.
What is gone is all still here. Florida is a place steeped in memories and significance for Staples, landscape, humidity, shapes in the sky, intangible tokens of youth. He worked on the album intermittently during these visits, but had to cancel recording sessions to take his mother to the hospital. Her ever present piano playing around the house was a key to finding music. Her loss is a reality impossible to express.
Cloud Souvenirs is laced with insistent phrases and melody lines that linger long after listening. Songs that hint at narrative without being weighed down by unnecessary detail. Evocative and economical, melancholic and magical. Songs that nourish life and encourage self-reflection. Pulsing electronica, acoustic strummers, synth stabs, dry snare drums setting the pace, clear melodies fill the sky, no rain for days.
Staples is more pop artist than an indie singer, a poet and craftsman working in an independent tradition and at a human scale. A twelve-string guitar or warbling effect pedal, a buoyant brass arrangement, a passage of vocal harmony–this pleasing sonic tapestry is anchored by his warm voice and naturalistic lyricism. Staples enlisted a hometown friend, producer Jeremy SH Griffith, to bring a fresh perspective to ten years of self-recording, their easy collaboration shines on each crisp and devastating track.