Morning Bride are down by the seaside for their latest instalment of melancholic folk.
By Mark Wright
Filey based band, Morning Bride, have released their third full length album, Goodbye, Seaside Danny Wilde. The new album was recorded in a home studio over the winter, and without a doubt this has had an effect on the music, as the listener can almost feel the fireside singing and jamming which went into the production of the album. Stylistically, the Goodbye, Seaside Danny Wilde shifts between a more atmospheric folk position on its opener, The Storm Clouds, to a kind of North Yorkshire-meets-Nashville feeling on Just Visiting and many more in between. What ties the album together though is its endearingly vintage nature and strong character driven song writing.
While the album has a vintage quality about its production and overall aesthetic, Morning Bride have skilfully avoided the saccharin-sweet nostalgia which can be found on some other modern folk albums which try to capture this same feeling. This fundamentally is down to the song writing, which at the band’s own admission shares similar tones to Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album, Nebraska, due to its similarly homemade and melancholic atmosphere, heavily focussing on characters and strong narrative themes. This connection to The Boss is not the only stateside link however, as the band’s vocalist, Amity, is a native of Massachusetts. Trans-Atlanticism is rife in this album, which fits well with the maritime and seaside aesthetics, as well as helping the album as a whole to incorporate different styles and develop a full, lush sound.
The titular track, Seaside Danny Wilde, has a distinctly sepia-toned edge around it, which as I have previously pointed out is no bad thing and really does add to the overall aesthetic and retrospective nature of the track. This said, while it is really a track rooted in what could be considered a bygone era, it sounds just as evocative in 2021 as it could have done in any other decade.
The tracks here run so deep and have so much to unpack, my best advice would be to listen to the album yourself to get a full picture of the aesthetics and skilful song writing at play here. Goodbye, Seaside Danny Wilde is out 20 March and our Editor in Chief Graeme with be chatting to Mark from the band about it on our Going Underground podcast on 19 March.