Good Morning, Magpie

Description

Deluxe 200-gram vinyl LP of Murder By Deaths 2010 album

With their fifth album Good Morning, Magpie, Murder by Death continue the tradition of border expansion. The difference, however, is that this time, the band literally went off the map to get there.

Going into the woods helped me write in a way I never wouldve been able to otherwise, says singer/guitarist Adam Turla, recalling the 2009 retreat into the Tennessee mountains during which, armed with little more than a tent, a fishing pole and a notebook, he wrote the 11 songs that would become Good Morning, Magpie. There were days where Id 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, nonstop sessions of pure writing. Ive never worked that way, ever, because with all the business of being a band, Ive never had so little to do! Every day I was either cooking, hiking while writing, or writing. I didnt speak to a single person the whole time.

Be that as it may, Good Morning, Magpie still speaks volumes. Recorded at Bloomingtons Farm Fresh Studios with Jake Belser (who most recently worked with MBD on their all-instrumental soundtrack to Jeff Vandermeers 2009 book Finch), and mixed by Grammy-winning Red of Tooth and Claw producer Trina Shoemaker, the album weaves 11 disparate stories into a whole thats unlike anything else in the bands catalog. These songs definitely come together as an album; we just arent relying on a concept this time, says Turla, referencing the conceptual storylines that drove Murder by Deaths last two albums as well as 2002s Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them? Being out in the woods with no pressure freed me up to explore different moods and different stories, all of which became linked through the experience I had writing them: just that sheer sprint of working in isolation.

With its junk-pile percussion and ramshackle Vaudevillian flow, You Dont Miss Twice is the only song on Good Morning, Magpie that directly references Turlas time in the woodsbut the songs spirit informs much of what surrounds it. I was telling a friend how I thought this was our most upbeat record, and his reply was, Seriously? Turla recalls, laughing. But upbeat doesnt necessarily mean happy. Take a song like Yesits got this fun, shuffling beat and this amazingly catchy melody from Sarah [Balliet, cello], but the lyrics are all about accepting death. Or Whiskey in the World, which is basically a sad bastards lament about how the whiskey that makes this character enjoy life is also what condemns him. That duality between the music and the lyrics is something we havent done much until now.