KEVIN MORBY - Little Wide Open

Welcome to the Badlands
Where the sky expands and you and I expire

With "Little Wide Open", Kevin Morby delivers a new (his third) heartfelt tribute to the places of the Midwest. Between myth and material reality, the "badlands" that Morby now relocates to the heart of America ("Javelin") swallow up whoever crosses them: beneath the overwhelming vastness of the sky and along stretches of lavender, "we are but lone passengers passing through." But these are also places far removed from the frenzy of the big city, perfect for rest — at least until the tornado sirens start wailing.
Paradise or hell, then? While probably only those who have actually lived there can answer that question (and even Morby himself doesn't seem to have reached a conclusion), there's no denying the bewitching beauty that radiates from the American songwriter's new work: from his lyrics and his Dylanesque storytelling, of course, but also from the warm, enveloping folk-rock instrumentation, shaped down to the smallest detail by Aaron Dessner in the producer's chair.

While the first half of the record is driven by more upbeat tracks, a strong presence of electric instruments, and songs on the road, the second part settles around the figure of the singer-songwriter, immersed, together with his trusty guitar, in boundless landscapes: "No one ever makes a sound/ except me on this guitar," Morby croons on "Cowtown". At the center sits the title track, the beating heart of the record, on which, for over eight minutes, the musician meditates on the passing of time, on the fleeting nature of life, and on its relationship with the far slower rhythms of geology.
But once he attunes himself to the peace of the Midwest, songwriter and landscape blend and transform into one another. The human body splinters into multitudes, absorbs the endlessness of the highways, opens into a prism of emotions and enters into deep contact with the person he's in a relationship with. He himself becomes "a little wide open", and above all makes peace with what no longer seems to be the enemy to defeat: "Time, we share the same dream/ to stretch on forever, towards eternity/ to be a little wide open/ to drift on forever, where nobody knows us".

The epic breath of the Midwest gives way to an elegiac tone in the closing songs, where our passage on Earth is mirrored in the eternal cycle of life and death. Cacti, sunflowers, jasmine blossoms, dandelions, but above all cockroaches, butterflies and fireflies become symbols of the fleeting nature of the human species. Fellow travelers to take as an example, whether for their heroic endurance of storms or for their daring acrobatic flights along busy highways, which, even though many end in a fatal crash against car windshields, reveal an unyielding yearning for self-determination: "It's not suicide if I die out chasing thrills/ just me trying to grow wings/ field guide for the butterflies".
After all, Kevin Morby has spent many years grappling with his own mortality — with ours. Now, with one of his finest works, he seems to have made peace with death, the final companion on a journey that, however brief, is damn intense.

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27/06/2026