Jason Morphew - Not For the Faint of Heart!
(BaDaBing!)
Jason Morphew, a transplanted Southerner living in Los Angeles,
calls his music "uprooted rock" as opposed to "roots rock."
The name is, of course, motivated by his new home in the city
of Angels, but the name also means that Morphew is not trying
to recreate the blues music he grew up with, as is the case with
much of "roots rock," but rather just write his songs his way and
let the impact of his influences fall where they may.
Morphew's second album, Not For the Faint of Heart!, is twenty
songs of singer-songwriter music made almost entirely from
Morphew's voice and acoustic guitar, recorded to
four track. The album includes 20 songs
and over 60 minutes of material, only a small amount of which
can truly be considered filler and featuring several very strong
songs.
However, some songs suffer from Morphew's dedication to his blues
influence. In order to write 20 songs, Morphew includes 4 or 5
which are cheesy, corny, or otherwise lyrically over the top. Such songs
are not necessarily bad; however, these songs need the music
accompanying the lyrics to be equally as silly in order to work.
This means using much more than just voice and acoustic guitar.
"Spiritual Librarian," "Elvis Was a Mama's Boy," and "Why Isn't
Anybody Dancing?" are all cute or clever enough to work, but with
little going on behind the singing other than a guitar, they feel
flat, like Morphew wasn't fully committed to being corny enough
to make the songs work.
While songs like these make themselves hard to enjoy, you are
sure to find four or five songs on the album that are easy
to love. "Caller ID" finds Morphew drunk and despondent after
a night of trying to forget his problems. He gives a call to
an ex to try and find someone to talk his problems over with,
but, since he is unable to get through, he assumes caller ID
is responsible for helping the ex filter his calls. By the
end of the song, Morphew goes from putting on a facade to deny
he's not as bad off as he is to breaking down and admitting he's
still in love. On "Yours," Morphew is upbeat, reflecting on
getting older, sounding like he's trying to convince a depressed
friend that reaching a new age divisible by ten isn't so bad.
"Cop Spotlight" is a dirty song about sex.
As "uprooted rock," as far as it covers the process of being
uprooted, Jason Morphew's music is thin. There is little direct
discussion of the effect of Los Angeles culture on this good
ol' Southern boy, and there is little reflection on the South
he left behind. Morphew's "uprooted rock" is really just a bunch
of songs on the universal topic of love and sex. This is the main
weakness of Morphew's music. Being an above average songwriter
living in L.A., he easily picks up interest from major publishing
companies (Sony) and gets his songs stuck in movies (Niagara,
Niagara). However, without any unique content reflecting on
his life in L.A. nor any truly profound emotional content, put
him in any other city and there's not much
to separate him, lyrically or musically, from the other 3 or 4
above average songwriters who self release CDRs, play in
coffeehouses and suburban bars, and never expect to
make a single dollar from their talent.
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