Kevin Morby – Little Wide Open (2-CD)
Review
Despite having made his name while living in Brooklyn and LA, Kevin Morby is anything but a coastal elite. Little Wide Open, his eighth record as a solo artist, plays like an ode to the middle of America, where the Kansas City-bred Morby now resides part-time in with his partner, Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield.
Nearly all the songs on the expansive 13-track record reference traveling, America or the Midwest in some fashion. “Welcome to the Midwest/ Where the sky knows best/ And you’ll finally get some rest/ ‘Til the tornado sirens start harmonizing,” Morby sings on the anthemic opening track “Badlands” (not to be confused with the Bruce Springsteen anthem).
That ethos is reflected in the music, too. Morby, whose distinctive drawl is like a cross between Bob Dylan and Lou Reed, has always been genre-agnostic, blending indie rock with blues, gospel, psychedelia and folk. Little Wide Open is the most purely Americana offering he’s issues yet, particularly on the twangy, banjo and fiddle-infused love song “Die Young.” The stomp-clap adjacent “Javelin” might be Morby’s hookiest single—and he’s had a few singular songs over the years, from “Harlem River” to “Campfire” and “Beautiful Strangers,” which Mavis Staples covered. Americana icon Lucinda Williams adds her gravely vocals to “Natural Disaster,” a seven-minute slow burn about the societal and personal disasters we all confront on a regular basis.
Produced by The National’s Aaron Dessner, whose own profile has grown considerably since working with pop stars Taylor Swift and Gracie Abrams, Little Wide Open plays like a culmination of Morby’s 13-plus year solo career. Is it Morby’s best record? That may depend on the vibe you’re looking for but there’s an argument for it being the most complete and the most accessible entry point if you’re just tuning in now.
Rudi Greenberg - Relix.com
For Kevin Morby, the “little wide open” is the big sky, the small lives, it’s his origins in the Midwest, and every duty and modesty and familiarity and isolation: the land, the people, and the parts of that inside him. “There’s something unintentionally musical about the Midwest; cicadas chirping in the trees, a train passing, a tornado siren going off,” explains Morby. “If you listen, there are these almost ominous sounds taking place beneath the wide-open sky—its ugliness and its beauty and how the two are often working together simultaneously. And while the Midwest isn’t technically the badlands, it’s my badlands.”
Little Wide Open is the title of Kevin Morby’s eighth studio album, produced by Aaron Dessner. In the summer of 2024, Dessner had asked Morby to support The National at their London show in Crystal Palace Park. Shortly after, Dessner—who was on a hot streak, having produced albums for Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and Gracie Abrams—reached out to Morby to say he’d love to produce his next album. They began recording at Aaron’s Long Pond Studio in Stuyvesant, NY, early in 2025 and finished in September of that year.
The album, which features a host of contributors such as Dessner—who plays multiple instruments across it—Amelia Meath, Andrew Barr, Justin Vernon, Katie Gavin, Lucinda Williams, Meg Duffy, and more, has been described by Morby as the third in a trilogy of releases, following 2020’s Sundowner and 2022’s This Is a Photograph, which catalogued his time in the Midwest after moving back to Kansas City. This time out, Dessner’s production elevates Morby’s recordings while never losing focus of the songs themselves. There’s a newfound confidence and clarity in both Morby’s writing and Dessner’s production that recalls Tom Petty’s 1994 classic Wildflowers.
Now primarily living in LA, the atmosphere that runs through Little Wide Open has changed somewhat from its predecessors. As Rachel Kushner writes of Morby in the album’s accompanying essay: “It’s about time, about feeling like he has shifted from nostalgia and the losing game, losing but beautiful, of holding onto the past. He has accepted that time is ceaselessly flowing, and you can’t stop it. Instead, he feels like he’s riding it. He’s riding passenger with time.”
Tracklist
UPC: 656605169125
Label: Dead Oceans
Release Date: 5.15.26
Format: CD