I’m not a regular concert-goer; it’s just not something my wife and I prioritize. However, now that we are unable to see live music for the foreseeable future, I find myself thinking through some of my favorite concert memories. There are plenty on a large scale: The Carters and Taylor Swift killing it at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, U2 filling the edges of the University of Oklahoma’s stadium, singing along with the Boss and all his friends at an outdoor venue in Houston.
But the most transcendent moments have always been at smaller venues, like healing with Ben Rector at Cain’s Ballroom after a couple of Oklahoma-based traumas. These smaller experiences are naturally more introspective, and they lend themselves to sharing more intimate moments with those you love, like reflecting on Andrew Peterson’s “Dancing in the Minefields” in Linden, TX, with my wife a few months after our wedding, or holding my mom’s hand not long after her parents died while Patty Griffin sings about heaven. The big concerts built up memories; the smaller ones built up my identity.
I imagine seeing John Moreland in concert would be much like the latter. Moreland is a Tulsa-based singer-songwriter who has operated in and with bands over the first ten years of his career, but has grown in popularity over the last ten years as a solo act. He’s been writing about the tension between identity and belief for much of that time. While Moreland’s style isn’t anything you haven’t heard before, especially if you’ve ever seen live music at a bar in Oklahoma, you’ve never heard anyone who can turn a phrase quite like him.
Moreland’s tour in support of LP5 has been postponed, but parsing his lyrics through headphones at home is its own reward. Writing about grappling with one’s identity has been like second nature to Moreland since his breakout 2013 record In the Throes. He sings on that album, “I worshiped at the altar of losing everything / And the guard I held together / Was losing all its shape.” It’s always been hard to separate who he is from how other people see him, particularly people he loves.
The songs on LP5 are a continuation of this story, though the swirl of despair sounds less dangerous. Instead, Moreland has affected a maturity that adds a certain potency to his plight. He’s on surer ground now, even if the ground is never completely solid. “I had a thought about darkness, a thought’s just a passing train / When you feel your weakest somebody knows your name.” Getting married in 2016 may have placed him on a stronger foundation, so while the grief is less urgent, it’s more complex now. “Crowded in for the sins we studied on silver screens / Couldn’t wait til we graduated to harder dreams.”
Moreland has publicly lamented his reputation for sad songs. He has a point; who doesn’t sing sad songs? His last album, Big Bad Luv, sought to shed the sad-sack label with a wider mix of genres. LP5 continues that growth with producer Matt Pence adding some wrinkles to the production. There are deep drum beats and drum machine effects that have never before appeared on Moreland’s records. Album closer “Let Me Be Understood” feels piped in from another dimension. And across the album, the piano and mellotron add to the expanding atmosphere, allowing for a wider variety of emotions that just grief.
But there’s something in Moreland’s gravelly voice that communicates a depth to his emotions that other artist’s lack. And his lyrics, full of references to the holy and the divine, understand that the search for one’s identity lies outside oneself. It’s hard to pretend that Moreland isn’t a master of the sad song when there are bars like this on his album: “You gave me a restlessness that lives deep down in my bones / And a pretty good reason to keep right on being alone.”
Maybe I respond so heavily to Moreland because I’m in a similar life stage, years into a job and a marriage with my self-view permanently altered from who I thought I was before my 20s. Our identities have been cracked, yet somehow strengthened. Because of this, John Moreland seems well-suited to those transcendent concert moments in smaller venues. I can imagine being in a room full of chattering people quieted down as he starts singing, “But darlin’ when you reach for me / It feels just like infinity / Honey help me break this curse / Howling at the universe again,” building up my memories and my identity all at once.
Coulda Been a Contender 