TE Morris - And You Were The Hunter

Power of TV

This is often an intense and at times intensely beautiful album. There are complexities in the vocal harmonising – mostly TE I presume – that reflect both the concentration of crafting and performance, as on powerful opener Bright Spark. These vocals do genuinely soar at times, and I can imagine the casual, intolerant-of-prettiness listener flinching, but I admire both that construction and delivery.

Second The Long Distance Runner is solo vocal, and acoustic guitar, so less intense in that delivery, but musically the incline to drama is conveyed through the violin and cello of respectively Sophie Green and Nicole Robson, Morris’ falsetto piggybacking those heights. Third with electric guitar, Provenance, has a tinge of Thom Yorke about it and I can take or leave, preferring the dual start. So fourth Cellar Door beginning with sparsely plucked acoustic guitar and almost spoken vocal brings us back to the quietude that seems to launch songs, and whilst there is a rise to this in the increased volume of still delicate guitar work, it remains a pensive and introspective sound.

As so often with my listening, and certainly a first as with my review now, I do not pick up on the lyrics quickly and this is something to come. So concentrating on the music alone, fifth Haven is another electric guitar number, this brief and more interlude than memorable. Sixth And You Were the Hunter has Morris harmonising with I’m guessing Robson, a slightly off-centre duet and alfresco recording that engages for its apparent spontaneity. This is followed by a studio and crafted harmonising in Memorial Day, vocals echoed from afar, so that ‘studio’ could be a large indoor space, like a church, but I have no idea. There is a choric ambiance at times that suggests such a venue, but as space rather than inspiration or any other relevance. And by now some of these songs have a demo feel to them, a rawness – not necessarily in sound but in presentation – that leaves them brusque rather than developed, but determined so as if to suggest rather than declare. Not sure why. Eighth Aliana is similar, perhaps mostly in its brevity.

Ninth Hopeless uses strings as mood-tones, here a little sombre and sad as they layer the song with lament, and the plucked guitar has a classical lilt adding to the sobriety. Penultimate and eleventh After The War Ends returns to the soaring with which the album began and recaptures a strength lost here and there on the way, or made so by contrast with that. The album ends on Love Can Do All But Raise the Dead, and for those who read my short piece on the TV programme Southcliffe, you’ll know how I came to TE Morris and this album, having purchased it today [with an immediate download] here. Acoustic guitar and cello [with violin?] are backdrop to a simply but beautifully sung song, and this simplicity offsets the drama of elsewhere though I do like both.