Murder By Death's "Good Morning, Magpie"

The music of Murder By Death has always been anachronistic. Like any industry, the music business is incessant in its attempts to find the next big thing: An artist that is both cutting edge and marketable. Murder By Death is neither of these things. Drawing inspiration from Old West lore, the group has maintained a unique sound that could bridge a cultural gap between generations. In our technologically saturated world, the members of Murder By Death refuse to accelerate beyond their natural bounds: On their new record, Good Morning, Magpie, the band has been able to use an old framework to take a fresh look at the world around them. By employing historical storytelling and an outlaw dynamic, MBD create a world that is temporally out of place, but uniquely similar to our own.

Now, you may find life to be hectic. Really hectic. And you’d be right to feel that way. Life has been made ever the more chaotic with the advent of our digital, 2.0 personas. We are trapped by the very technologies that we once lauded. There is no going back. We’ve committed ourselves to a life where information, not knowledge, is valued as cultural currency. This is generally true. However, this is also generally false.

It all depends on what you want to believe.

Sure, we’re bombarded with meaningless information dressed up as “news” on a minutely basis. And yes, we’re able to undertake a CIA-like approach to investigate the lives of near-strangers. This could represent a superficial inquisitiveness in our society: We’re hungry for information and we’ll take to non-academic, freelance socio-psychological studies in order to attain our great prize. (I.e. We “creep” Facebook profiles to find out that Mark’s ex-girlfriend Jane once made out with Trevor, who was only two months away from attending a wedding in Poland with Miranda!?! Yes, the very same Miranda who pioneered a group to “Make a Law Against Advertisers Using Endangered Iguanas in Commercials to Sell Peruvian Baking Soda.” Can you believe that bitch?) We’re acutely interested in those around us, that’s all.

OR: The information is at our fingertips so we’d feel stupid not to get the most out of it. Privacy be damned: If people didn’t want us prodding at their lives they wouldn’t taunt us with them so pompously.

Sadly, what we generally fail to realize is that, in ALL instances, there is a choice to be made: Do this or don’t. Abide by this rule, or live by your own. Walk right past the postal worker, or stab her in the shin. A choice is always there, but it’s often neglected. Sometimes the right choice seems so obvious that it’s as if there was no choice at all. More often than not however, the very opposite is true: We’re so used to things being a certain way that we’re led to believe there is no opposing view. This is why we sometimes make the refreshing choice to take a walk on the wild side. This is why we experiment with different people, different substances, different surroundings. This is why Adam Turla decided to pull a Chris McCandless and take himself off the grid, if only for a little while. What he found was that, from the outside, he could best examine the inside as the outside as the inside.

The eleven songs on Good Morning, Magpie were written primarily by singer/guitarist Adam Turla while alone in the mountains of Tennessee. Turla took two weeks for himself in order to write and explore. Bringing with him little more than a notebook, a tent, and a fishing pole, he ventured into the wilderness: “Going into the woods helped me write in a way I never would’ve been able to otherwise. There were days where I’d sit down and write for seven hours, make dinner, and then sit down and write late into the night with my little camp light going: Just intense, non-stop sessions of pure writing. I’ve never worked that way, ever, because with all the business of being a band, I’ve never had so little to do! I didn’t speak to a single person the whole time." From this trip, Turla set the groundwork for the best album of his career.

The first two tracks open up the record in familiar Murder By Death fashion: Tributes to Adam’s favourite vice. “Kentucky Bourbon” is a short, light-hearted song that serves as the introduction to the theatrical Magpie; from start to finish, this record serves as an elegant soundtrack to a non-existent Western film, bringing six-shooters and burlesque houses to mind. With little more than Sarah Balliet on piano (she also plays cello in the group), Turla spends thirty seconds crooning about his love for whisky. The rest of the band (bassist Matt Armstrong and drummer Dagan Thogerson) joins Balliet and Turla for “As Long As There Is Whiskey In The World,” the thematic counterpart to “Kentucky Bourbon.” Injecting some of the Maritimes into their Western feel, MBD, who have always used alcoholic imagery in their songs, create their first true drinking song. Had Shane McGowan drank himself to death (like many assumed he would) and been replaced in the Pogues by Johnny Cash, this is the first single that this collaboration would have yielded. Though the drinker in this tale appears to love the booze that keeps him going, he’s well aware that it will likely be the agent of his demise.

"As Long As There's Whiskey In The World"

“Slow down little girl / You’ve lost your way in this world / Slow down and start again / You’ll feel much better in the end,” begins “On The Dark Streets Below,” a song that wouldn’t feel out of place at a Mexican funeral. Mariachi horns and tumbling drums mould an upbeat, yet sinister track about losing touch with reality; death, in a sense, is achieved when a person is no longer at peace with the world around them.

The first true ballad on Magpie comes in the form of “King of the Gutters, Prince of the Dogs.” Balliet’s cello carries this song up and down “like a ship lost in the fog.” Towards the end of the track the speed picks up. The drums become more militaristic and Turla bellows “Nothing can touch me / No force, no sound,” before accepting his fate as the “king of the gutters, the prince of the dogs,” a lost traveller, an outlaw on the fringes of society. This acceptance is not in totality however, as is reflected on “Piece By Piece.” Turla’s vocals are overdubbed deeply as he drops science on his young son. Though Turla has accepted his position in life, he makes sure to warn his son against “Doing what I’ve done / You’re still young.” Reminiscent of Greg Graffin, Turla’s howling inspires hope even when there’s none in sight.

"Piece By Piece"

“Good Morning, Magpie” acts as the intermission to the record of the same name, gearing us up for the second act to begin. The melody hangs loosely from the strings of the cello, while the rhythm section softly warns of trouble soon to befall our hero.

So far, the song titles on Magpie have been generally subdued in comparison to those on their previous efforts: “Holy Lord, Shawshank Redemption Is Such a Good Movie,” “I'm Afraid of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and “Until Morale Improves, the Beatings Will Continue” come to mind. Taking atmospheric cues from Tom Waits’ “Singapore” however, “You Don’t Miss Twice (When You’re Shaving With a Knife)” provides the most fun song and title on the record. Literally about being a barber in the early twentieth century (“Gonna try my hand at the barber’s trade / When you’ve got a knife, you’ve got it made”), “You Don’t Miss Twice” is no doubt silly, but fits perfectly into the feel of the rest of the album; the literal lyrics of this song give more weight to thematic elements of the record’s story.

“To Have and Have Not,” from Billy Bragg’s debut album Life's a Riot with Spy Vs Spy (1983), serves as the folky inspiration for the encouraging “Yes.” Preserving the optimism of “Piece By Piece,” this song details how love will prevail as long as you’re true to yourself and those around you: “Yes, everyone comes and goes / White in the head, before we know / Set things right before you go / Let the people you love know… / Make amends before it gets worse / If the heartache don’t get you first.” Sure it’s about how everyone dies, but it reinforces that attitude we must have before the inevitable: Do the best you can with the time your given.

"Yes"

Vocally, Turla has often been compared to Johnny Cash (see above for proof), but “Foxglove” is the one track by MBD that could really be confused with something from The Man in Black. “Foxglove” is a simple love letter propelled by drum rolls and poignant cello, and maybe the only song in recent memory that is actually lacking church bells. The closing line, “It was always you,” assures a peaceful departure from an otherwise chaotic existence.

"Foxglove"

The darkest, most primal song on Magpie is “White Noise.” Native drums accompany Turla’s call to “meet him in the valley,” an adversarial taunt towards a final battle. Coming a long way with his voice since MBD’s debut Like the Exorcist, But More Breakdancing (2002), Turla is now able to adjust his register to match a much wider array of songs. “White Noise” showcases his lowest pitch and, to his credit, is nearly unrecognizable in comparison to some of the earlier tracks on Magpie.

“The Day” signifies the Rapture, and the closing of Magpie. Civilization and the animal kingdom appear to be equal in nature, both only able to survive because of the Earth we’ve been granted: “The trees gave up their roots and the leopards left their caves / All the rattlesnakes came down from the mountains and the kings all became slaves.” This is the naturalistic message we are left with upon the end of the album. The Earth was here long before we were and will continue to be here long after we’re gone. Though this is troubling to the narcissist in all of us, our sense of reality should grow stronger knowing that nothing really matters. And by definition, if nothing matters, everything matters; it’s all in the way you choose to look at it.

Murder By Death’s Good Morning, Magpie is as worldly as it is unique. Beyond the rustic, turn-of-the-century narrative, and drunkenly lovelorn characters, there are lush melodies and unadorned morals. Magpie’s beauty lies within its ability to stretch the walls of the album, to use every second to make an impact. Good Morning, Magpie is theatrical in its ebb and flow, laying bare a story that rises and falls in sync with its accompanying music. A success on all levels, the primitive, yet humbling nature of Murder By Death’s newest record demonstrates that in a society that’s seemingly bound to fail, you make your own luck and blaze your own trail.

ARTIST: Murder By Death

ALBUM: Good Morning, Magpie

LABEL: Vagrant

RATING: A+