- The religious album has a well established place in rock ’n’ roll lore. Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Van Morrison have all released albums of praise and joy. It’s only reasonable, that after various bands and two acclaimed records to his own name, that Kevin Morby would release his own take on our spiritual availability.
Morby’s third full length Oh My God is a double album, and all prejudices should be checked at the outset, this definitely isn’t a devotional akin to Dylan’s Slow Train Coming. Oh My God weaves a presence between the aloof poignancy of Singing Saw and the heel-ground neon of City Music. Oh My God, is a deeply reverent body of work but it teases out from the cliche the foibles of humanity and in doing so becomes a cheeky proclamation of life.
Much of rock music has trouble with unknowingly serving the cliche, here in Oh My God Morby lays out the theatre of Americana. Garagey 60’s rocker and single OMG Rock n Roll along with the roguish organ-born ballad Savannah, carry significant themes of how dangerous America can be but the songs respective arrangements are light and playful, both have moments of delightful surprise and abrupt change that bring a certain theatricality and presents an acceptance of life, a love of beauty in the moment in the face of our mortality.
A curious coupling of simple humanism and an observance of ritual and adjunct community runs through the entire fourteen songs, Morby flips his stories of praise and fate is replaced with chaos, the many religious double entendres offering a lot of fun. Hail Mary, a jaunty and rambling roller of a song, where living life on the edge is a sport to the average person and Congratulations the greatest celebration of life, with it’s rollicking Doo Wop. It’s here that Morby becomes his most flamboyantly peaceful, sincere and erudite in his humanism, singing “we’re all winning, we’re all alive” in direct contradiction of the prayers for forgiveness for living life in the first place.
Oh My God is full of the wonder, splendour and freedom of American Rock ’n’ Roll. It supplies the listener with an immediate sense of compassion, where fulfilment is found in song and singing along, the cliche Oh My God becoming a joyful rebuff of suffering. When Kevin Morby states that this is his best record yet, I very much agree with him.
- Nicholas J. Rodwell.