I am a firm believer that the best music has the power to transport its listeners to another place and time. That new geography might be foreign to us — it might even be unpleasant — but ultimately the sounds that move us there (as well as our own ability to suspend disbelief and take the journey) form the sort of connection that is lasting. That music is timeless. It is special.
Unless you move in the rarefied world of the Portland, Oregon house-party scene you most likely haven’t heard of Kyle Morton and his massive 10- to 17-piece collaborative Typhoon. That situation is most likely about to change. Hunger and Thirst is an album of great emotional power. Its songs range from austere folk reveries to lush, gospel-inflected chorale arrangements, to a visceral brand of heart-pounding chamber-pop. Morton’s songs take on the human condition: pain, loneliness, sickness, and death; grace, redemption, and illumination. It is all there. And if you think that sounds like a bummer, you’d be very wrong. While the lyrics look unflinchingly into dark places, the music is hopeful, beautiful; it provides a transcendent counter-point to the struggles that so often give meaning to our experience on this mortal coil.
Related Posts
How have a bunch of kids — all in their early 20s — become so wise about the world? On a song like “The Sickness Unto Death,” how does a young songwriter like Morton so clearly and painfully express the frustration of an elderly person who’s body is failing? Or in a song about terminal illness, “CPR-Part 2,” craft a lyric as poignant as:
“Since you have nothing to do with your hands,
you might as well pray,
I am no god-fearing man,
but I am afraid.”
I won’t pretend to know the answers to those questions, but I do know I’m better for taking the journey. Typhoon’s songs are mature and perfectly realized miniatures, and they fit together as if interlocking pieces. Hunger and Thirst is its own little universe, and Morton and crew transport us there and make us look dead at its harsh realities. And somewhere, somehow, along the way, we can’t help but feel that it is all going to be alright. Great art can be painfully introspective, but it has to let us in at some point; it has to remind us that there are certain universals that communicate that we’re all in this together.
If this sounds interesting to you, please know there is an interview with Kyle Morton in the Verbicide pipeline. Stay tuned. In the meantime, know that this is a wonderful album. Timeless. Special.
(Tender Loving Empire, PO Box 1058, Portland, OR, 97207)