Kevin Morby

For Kevin Morby, the “little wide open” is the big sky, the small lives, it’s his origins in the Midwest, & every duty and modesty and familiarity and isolation. “There’s something unintentionally musical about the Midwest; cicadas chirping in the trees, a train passing, a tornado siren going off,” explains Morby. “If you listen, there are these almost ominous sounds taking place beneath the wide-open sky—its ugliness and its beauty and how the two are often working together simultaneously. And while the Midwest isn’t technically the badlands, it’s my badlands.” Little Wide Open is the title of Kevin Morby’s eighth studio album, produced by Aaron Dessner. The album, which includes a host of contributors such as Dessner, Amelia Meath, Andrew Barr, Justin Vernon, Katie Gavin, Lucinda Williams, Meg Duffy, and more, has been described by Morby as the third in a trilogy of releases, following 2020’s Sundowner and 2022’s This Is a Photograph, which catalogued his time in the Midwest after moving back to Kansas City. Now primarily living in LA, the atmosphere that runs through Little Wide Open has changed somewhat from its predecessors. As Rachel Kushner writes of Morby in the album’s accompanying essay: “It’s about time, about feeling like he has shifted from nostalgia & the losing game, losing but beautiful, of holding onto the past. He has accepted that time is ceaselessly flowing, and you can’t stop it. Instead, he feels like he’s riding it. He’s riding passenger with time.”