BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//360exp//Calendar//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:360exp REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/Denver BEGIN:VEVENT UID:e6a541b8-4359-4283-afe7-fa9768fe9c1b@360exp.net SEQUENCE:29843018 DTSTAMP:20260928T172017Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260928T073845Z DTSTART:20261011T030000Z DTEND:20261011T070000Z SUMMARY:John Moreland with Georgia Maq LOCATION:The Lariat DESCRIPTION:After an impressive 2010s run of albums that earned him a devot ed fanbase\, accolades from outlets like The New York Times\, Fresh Air\, and Pitchfork\, and a place in the upper echelon of modern Americana singe r-songwriters\, John Moreland has already taken two unexpected turns this decade\, both of which highlight his fierce artistic independence. First\, he released a brilliant and sonically layered folk-electronica meditation on modern alienation\, 2022’s Birds In The Ceiling\, that took some of his fans by surprise. Then\, after wrapping up a difficult tour behind tha t record in November 2022\, he stopped working entirely. He took an entire year off from playing shows and didn’t use a smartphone for 6 months. “At the end of that year\, I was just like ‘Nobody call me’. I neede d to not do anything for a while and just process\,” Moreland says. Afte r nearly a decade in the limelight\, constantly jostled by the expectation s of his audience\, the music industry\, and anonymous strangers online\, he carved out some time to rest\, heal\, and reflect for the first time.\n \nThe result of that unplugged year at home is 2024’s Visitor\, a folk-r ock record that is intimate\, immediate\, deeply thoughtful\, and catchy a s hell. Moreland recorded the album at his home in Bixby\, Oklahoma\, in o nly ten days\, playing nearly every instrument himself (his wife Pearl Rac hinsky sang on one song\, and his longtime collaborator John Calvin Abney contributed a guitar solo)\, as well as engineering and mixing the album. “Simplicity and immediacy felt very important to the process\,” he say s.\n\nThis is a return to the approach Moreland took on his breakthrough a lbums\, 2013’s In The Throes and 2015’s High On Tulsa Heat\, both of w hich were largely self-recorded at home with a small cadre of additional m usicians. Echoes of these early albums can be heard on Visitor (Moreland m akes a passing reference to In The Throes’ opening track “I Need You T o Tell Me Who I Am” in two different songs on Visitor)\, which finds Mor eland shutting out the noisy world outside\, and the even noisier digital world in his pocket\, to reconnect with a muse that’s had to increasingl y compete for his attention in the intervening years. Visitor charts his j ourney back to this muse. If Birds In The Ceiling’s theme was alienation \, Visitor’s theme is un-alienation.\n\nMoreland begins the album where he began his year-long process of healing: doomscrolling past images of po litical turmoil\, war\, and environmental destruction\, in a trio of surpr isingly hooky folk songs that address present-day social realities more di rectly than any previous John Moreland songs. On opening track “The Futu re Is Coming Fast”\, Moreland describes the perpetually logged-on life i n a time of rolling catastrophe over gentle fingerpicking: “The news kee ps steady coming in / Our condition shows its teeth again / A nightmare we all thought would end.”\n\nIn the bridge of that song\, Moreland lands on a key couplet that captures the personal toll of living inside a perpet ual cycle of digital bleakness\, while also hinting at a way out: “But w e don’t grieve\, and we don’t rest / We just choose the lie that feels the best.” In order to cope with our digitally mediated lives\, where w e constantly bear witness to ongoing disasters while feeling powerless to do anything about them\, we must walk around in a persistent state of deni al. We repress feelings and lie to ourselves continuously. This status quo is\, of course\, antithetical to the conditions that produce transcendent works of art. For an artist with ambitions like Moreland’s\, this is a big problem.\n\nAn infinite feed filled with bad news isn’t the only thi ng that’s been keeping Moreland from processing his emotions. Ironically \, a busy career as a touring musician can prevent you from doing the deep self-reflection so necessary to the creative process just as much as a sm artphone can. On “No Time”\, Moreland sings “Now it’s all a blur / They told you who you were\,” followed by the chorus line\, “I don’ t have the time to cry”. In the bridge of “Will The Heavens Catch Us? ”\, Moreland describes how painful it can feel to focus exclusively on c hasing success - often by following rules set down by others - without tak ing the time to process one’s emotions\, reflect\, and heal: “We writh e in agony / For our precious little legacy”. No wonder Moreland needed a break.\n\nSo what’s Moreland’s solution to this impasse? The first s tep is the same one that Henry David Thoreau posed in Walden\, another wor k about an artist intentionally isolating with the purpose of pursuing a d eeper truth: “Simplify\, simplify\, simplify”. No shows for a whole ye ar. No smartphone. No studio time. No additional musicians. Strip things a way and let inspiration emerge. On a musical level\, the result is a raw\, straightforward sound. Moreland leaves a lot of space in these songs. To hammer home the folk immediacy\, he includes some new-for-him instrumentat ion\, most prominently on two haunting instrumental interludes that he tra cked live with a field recorder during late-night country drives. (Who kne w that\, on top of everything else\, Moreland plays the mandolin and fiddl e?) The result is that\, when Moreland sings “The more you say\, the les s it means” on the track of that title\, it has the feeling of being a s ort of personal mantra.\n\nBy doing all of that simplifying\, Moreland cre ates space to invite the muse back in - a process that he narrates in a pa ir of gorgeous invocations that kick off Side Two of the album\, “Blue D ream Carolina” and “Silver Sliver” (the latter of which was also tra cked live with a field recorder). He begins the side with what is perhaps the record’s most poignant verse:\n\nBlue dream Carolina\, remind me why I do this\n\nTell me what the truth is\, don’t tell me who to be\n\nI d on’t have to tell you this life is plenty painful\n\nHere comes my falle n angel\, falling down on me\n\nBy the end of this verse\, his muse\, his “fallen angel”\, has returned to him\, now a little worse for the wear . And by the end of the album\, Moreland even seems to have resolved some of the internal struggles that led to his year off the road\, as is reveal ed in a fiery couplet that signals his recommitment to a relentless pursui t of the truth: “I will not be your puppet or your payment / Your easy e ntertainment\, for I’ve made amends to me.” Moreland has grieved and r ested and come out on the other side with a new world-weariness and hard-w on wisdom.\n\nBut there is another path he could have taken. On his Petty- esque ode to despair “One Man Holds The World Hostage”\, Moreland clev erly leaves the identity of the “one man” in question open. He could b e one of any number of the men currently endangering humanity\, whether it ’s a world leader with access to nuclear weapons\, an oil CEO pursuing e ver-greater profits in spite of the threat posed by climate change\, or ju st an average Joe with hate in his heart. But all of these “one men” h ave something in common. As Moreland sings\, “One man holds the world ho stage ‘cause he’s afraid of his feelings”. This is the line that uni fies the album’s social commentary with the personal journey that Morela nd describes. The denial and avoidance that most of us rely on to cope wit h the relentless speed and noise of modern life are\, if allowed to fester \, also the source of our greatest dangers. If we don’t work through our shit\, Moreland suggests\, we all have the potential to turn to the dark side. Moreland’s narration of his journey back to his muse is more than a simple anecdote\, then. The steps that he took - simplify your life\, th en listen to that deep and quiet voice inside of you long and hard - form a road map for all of us toward some sort of healing\, not just for oursel ves individually\, but potentially for society as a whole.\n\nJohn Morelan d is known for writing lines that hit you in the gut\, but many of the bes t moments on Visitor are more subtle. The significance of one of the recor d’s best lines\, from “The More You Say\, The Less It Means\,” may t ake multiple listens to fully sink in: “Some folks say and some folks kn ow”. This line sums up John Moreland’s worldview very neatly. It lays out the dichotomy of truth and lies that Moreland has spent his entire car eer examining\, but now more elegantly than ever. On the one hand\, there are people who constantly talk (or sing\, or write\, or post online) witho ut deep thought or reflection - often irresponsibly\, even dangerously\, a nd for personal gain. These are the “weary worn-out fools” and “famo us false prophets” he lambasted on In The Throes\, or the subject of “ One Man Holds The World Hostage” on Visitor. And on the other hand\, the re are folks who know - those who commit themselves to the pursuit of trut h and wisdom\, and who only say things when they fully know them to be tru e. In Moreland’s book\, the artist’s true calling is to be one of the latter - the “folks who know”. While John Moreland has already earned a spot in the pantheon of the great singer-songwriters of his generation\, Visitor confirms his place in that much loftier Hall Of Fame.\n\nBoletos: https://dice.fm/event/eo8xxw-john-moreland-with-georgia-maq-10th-oct-the- lariat-buena-vista-tickets URL;VALUE=URI:https://360exp.net/events/e6a541b8-4359-4283-afe7-fa9768fe9c1 b STATUS:CONFIRMED END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR