T. Hardy Morris Ruminates on a Burning World on The Digital Age of Rome

Digital cigarettes. Hair provide retailers. Low cost aquatic pets. Tribal tattoo ideas.

Everybody sees the indicators that hold over the countless maze of strip malls lining the rolling expanse of Georgia countryside between Athens and Atlanta—and certainly the remainder of America. It’s the vanguard—the outer limits of a tradition that’s consumed by its personal excesses.

Whether or not these monuments to trendy consumerism fill you with dread or provide you with snort over the absurdity of their omnipotence, they yield disarming and highly effective imagery when T. Hardy Morris sings about them in “Buying Heart Sunsets.” The music is one thing of an summary thesis hidden inside his newest album, The Digital Age of Rome, which was launched June 25 by way of New West Information’ Normaltown imprint.

The Digital Age of Rome by T. Hardy Morris

Within the yr 2021, titling a brand new album The Digital Age of Rome comes throughout as pretty cut-and-dried commentary aimed toward life in a world that’s perpetually on the verge of going up in flames over politics, techno horror, local weather disaster, and many others.

Nonetheless, The Digital Age of Rome is an inward-sprawling affair. Singer, guitar participant and songwriter Morris is extra fascinated by exploring the dystopian panorama of the brand new irregular than arriving at any putting epiphanies, conclusions or cautionary tales.

“We’re at some extent the place all the things might maintain, or it might crumble,” Morris says. “There’s a large Pandora’s field of issues you possibly can converse about throughout the album’s title. It’s not simply know-how however the repercussions of know-how and its political implications which we’ve witnessed firsthand for the previous 4 years—seeing the way in which it convolutes and pollutes completely different sectors of individuals…It’s nice to have entry to all of this info that now we have, however info doesn’t essentially equal fact.”

Morris has lengthy possessed a singular talent for carving out direct and highly effective messages from wealthy musical textures wrapped in tones of nostalgia, be it underneath his personal identify or along with his earlier bands Diamond Rugs and Lifeless Accomplice. Drop a needle on the brand new album, although, and throughout the first few moments of opening quantity “DirtRocker” nostalgia takes on new which means.

“With a variety of my songwriting up to now, I’ve usually relied on nostalgia. Perhaps I’ve relied on all of it the way in which to the top of my recollections and what it was that made it fascinating to me,” Morris says. “Once I began writing these songs, I very a lot wished to jot down within the second and lift a variety of questions.”

“Sonically,“ he goes on to say, ”I wished it to be musical and nice, however I additionally wished to create one thing that feels a bit of bit off-kilter.”

The album’s development, from conception to recording, was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, inflicting his preliminary imaginative and prescient for the report to morph into an entirely new album. What began as a set of 13 songs—extensions from his 2018 album Dude, the Obscure—discovered new depth and new dimensions amidst the downtime.

Whereas fleshing out the off-kilter vibe he wished to summon with newer songs, Morris come across an alternate tuning along with his guitar. “It’s just one string, however I’ve it tuned manner as much as be in unison with one other string, so it creates type of a drone,” Morris says. “While you play sure notes inside chords it creates this single note-off impact—it’s in key, however it’s unusual.”

Later, he transposed a number of the older songs he’d written utilizing the identical tuning, giving rise to the album’s lilting and otherworldly intonation, which holds a lot of its haunting ambiance.

When performed alongside the icepick tones of guitarist Charlton Eugene Woolfolk III, the 2 create a sound the place swells, layers and drones matter simply as a lot as melody and musical construction.

As a result of scenario with the pandemic, numerous gamers got here in to report throughout completely different periods. Atlanta songstress Faye Webster sings again up on “New New New…Subsequent Subsequent Subsequent.” The remainder of the feminine vocals on the later tracks all through the album are carried out by Shelly Colvin. 

Producer and multi-instrumentalist Adam Landry, programmer Nate Nelson, Drive-by Truckers drummer Brad Morgan, bass participant Vaughn Lamb and metal guitar participant Matt “Pistol” Stoessel are additionally featured all through the album.

By the point the music “Simply Fake Every thing is Positive” brings The Digital Age of Rome to a bounding shut, the one resolve the music provides is discovering a capability to snort off no matter it’s—not less than within the context of the report’s idea— that causes you nervousness. “I attempted to offer it a bit of little bit of satire,” Morris says. “It’s a type of conditions the place you’d actually love to simply say what you actually assume. Or you possibly can simply write a humorous music and hopefully, it makes you’re feeling a bit of higher about all of it.”

Like what you simply learn? Assist Flagpole by making a donation today. Each greenback you give helps fund our ongoing mission to offer Athens with high quality, impartial journalism.