Through his long-running project Hunter Morris & Blue Blood, songwriter Hunter Morris has proven himself a master of economy. Whatever emotion, however deeply explored, Morris never wastes listening time or musical space. It’s as if he has always been searching for a perfect fit. On the new Blue Blood LP, Give In To Livin’, he’s found himself in the balance between resignation and resolve, the twin handrails of emotional stability.
That said, there’s a buoyancy to Give In To Livin’ that carries Morris’ songs atop his often troubled waters. Indeed, musically speaking, these are the most clearly hopeful tunes he’s written. He’s joined on these songs by Hank Sullivant, Phillip Brantley, Avery Leigh ,Nicholas Robbins, and Jeremy Wheatley and the record features the crack production team of Sullivant, Drew Vandenberg, and Joel Hatstat.
Morris says of the album, “Give In To Livin’ is about getting older and looking back on life and how I got here…Kind of an overall existential what the fuck? But I hope the album conveys equal weight towards looking forward while learning from the past to make the rest of my life the best that it can possibly be…Live life and live it hard and have an absolute blast in the process.”
Today Glide is offering up an exclusive premiere of the video for “Leaving Sedona,” one of the standout tracks on the new album. Taking a sort of mixed media approach to the videos, Morris locks into a sound that brings to mind the dreamy twang-rock of groups like Futurebirds and Li’l Cap’n Travis. His cool, laid back vocals drift over the steel guitar and simple indie rock soundtrack that features flourishes of electric guitar alongside acoustic strumming. This is definitely groovy stuff that stirs up your curiosity about the rest of Morris’ work.
Morris describes the inspiration behind the tune:
Leaving Sedona originated with a text sent to me by an old friend. He and his family were traveling out west and had seen some trout streams (my day job is working as a fly fishing guide). It just said “Leaving Sedona today. It’s good to get away, or so they say” along with a picture or something. I wrote him back and said, “Kemp, that’s a song!” He’s a lifelong Athens musician so I think he can’t help but to write lyrically. Anyways, I turned it into a metaphor (of leaving the place as well as the woman) for so many relationships that I’ve had. I thought she was the one, gave it everything, and then finally admitted that it was time to move on and try again.
The music video is one of ten videos that cover the entire album. Morris describes the process for making videos for every song on the album:
“The original concept of the videos was to make the dolls exude youth and innocence as a paradox against the narrator of the album who is getting older and doing a reassessment of his life up to this point. They also serve as a way to convey that the songs are all flashbacks to different relationships from years gone by. The beauty of watching the puppet characters as they navigate finding their way to and from each other is that there is a certain anonymity to them. So instead of having real human characters in the videos who look and act in a particular way, it’s much easier for the viewer/listener to see/hear the songs with themselves inserted into them. April took that very broad idea and made it into something incredibly moving, but she also managed to make it really funny, trippy, sad, fun, depressing, hopeful and self-destructive all at the same time. And she couldn’t have done a better job of visually reflecting all of those emotions that I was trying to get across in the songs themselves.”
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