John Moreland - Visitor '2024

Tracks list

After an impressive 2010s run of albums that earned him a devoted fanbase,
accolades from outlets like The New York Times, Fresh Air, and Pitchfork, and a
place in the upper echelon of modern Americana singer-songwriters, John Moreland
has already taken two unexpected turns this decade, both of which highlight his
fierce artistic independence. First, he released a brilliant and sonically
layered folk-electronica meditation on modern alienation, 2022’s Birds In
The Ceiling, that took some of his fans by surprise. Then, after wrapping up a
difficult tour behind that record in November 2022, he stopped working entirely.
He took an entire year off from playing shows and didn’t use a smartphone
for 6 months. “At the end of that year, I was just like ‘Nobody call
me’. I needed to not do anything for a while and just process,”
Moreland says. After nearly a decade in the limelight, constantly jostled by the
expectations of his audience, the music industry, and anonymous strangers
online, he carved out some time to rest, heal, and reflect for the first time.

The result of that unplugged year at home is 2024’s Visitor, a folk-rock
record that is intimate, immediate, deeply thoughtful, and catchy as hell.
Moreland recorded the album at his home in Bixby, Oklahoma, in only ten days,
playing nearly every instrument himself (his wife Pearl Rachinsky sang on one
song, and his longtime collaborator John Calvin Abney contributed a guitar
solo), as well as engineering and mixing the album. “Simplicity and
immediacy felt very important to the process,” he says.

This is a return to the approach Moreland took on his breakthrough albums,
2013’s In The Throes and 2015’s High On Tulsa Heat, both of which
were largely self-recorded at home with a small cadre of additional musicians.
Echoes of these early albums can be heard on Visitor (Moreland makes a passing
reference to In The Throes’ opening track “I Need You To Tell Me
Who I Am” in two different songs on Visitor), which finds Moreland
shutting out the noisy world outside, and the even noisier digital world in his
pocket, to reconnect with a muse that’s had to increasingly compete for
his attention in the intervening years. Visitor charts his journey back to this
muse. If Birds In The Ceiling’s theme was alienation, Visitor’s
theme is un-alienation.

Tracklist:
1.01 - John Moreland - The Future Is Coming Fast (2:46) 
1.02 - John Moreland - Gentle Violence (3:54) 
1.03 - John Moreland - One Man Holds The World Hostage (3:44) 
1.04 - John Moreland - Sobo Interlude (0:45) 
1.05 - John Moreland - The More You Say, The Less It Means (3:57) 
1.06 - John Moreland - Will The Heavens Catch Us? (4:39) 
1.07 - John Moreland - Blue Dream Carolina (3:43) 
1.08 - John Moreland - Silver Sliver (2:20) 
1.09 - John Moreland - Ain't Much I Can Do About It (2:43) 
1.10 - John Moreland - No Time (3:28) 
1.11 - John Moreland - Bixhoma Interlude (0:46) 
1.12 - John Moreland - Visitor (4:35)

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