At the beginning of March, Kevin Morby roared back to the plate with the title track single to his upcoming album, This Is A Photograph. The new album, out on May 13th, was mostly written in Memphis, when Morby settled into the town for a period to aid his ailing father. He spent his days reflecting on the Mississippi riverside and thinking about some of the often troubled geniuses whose lives were marked by the city in some way. “Rock Bottom” is a song written from the perspective of those misunderstood souls, who created a lasting body of work even though they were chided for being different.
“They’re all gonna laugh at you, they’re all gonna laugh at you, all of my life,” the song opens. The video is an ice cream nunchuck western (seriously) directed by Johnny Eastlund and features Tim Heidecker, Bedouine’s Azniv Korkejian, Jess Wolfe of Lucius, and Morby’s bandmate Cyrus Gengrav. The cowbell-studded slacker punk rock lean of “Rock Bottom” definitely hearkens back to the pleasantly bizarre work of Jay Reatard, and Morby commented in a statement on how this was, in fact, an inspiration for him:
“I’d often pass a mural of the late James Lee Lindsey Jr. on Main Street (in Memphis) which eventually lead me down a rabbit hole to revisiting his body of work including watching the 2009 documentary filmed during his last days, Better Than Something. I was taken by how similar his story was to that of many other American icons that were ahead of their time and too-quickly rose from the bottom to the top, inevitably burning out. I read that his stage name, Jay Reatard, was worn as a badge of honor after years of being picked on in grade school – which may or may not be why on the cover of his seminal album Blood Visions he’s covered in blood as a nod to Sissy Spacek’s character in Carrie. Because of this I chose to begin the song by repeating ‘they’re all gonna laugh at you!’ When in the studio I pointed at the last Reatard’s album, Grown Up, F*cked Up as a reference for what I was trying to achieve sonically.”
Along with this second single, Morby has also launched a Substack newsletter that promises to give insight into the making of the new album that he calls his “magnum opus.” You’ll find photos, demos, doodles, poems and more that make up the “puzzle pieces” of This Is A Photograph.
Watch the video for “Rock Bottom” above.
This Is A Photograph is out 5/13 via Dead Oceans. Pre-order it here.