aaamusic | On 13, Mar 2012

After a five years-long journey James Mercer’s hauled on the quiet docks of Port of Morrow. The journey has been as tormented at least as much as these shores are peaceful. “My life in an upturned boat, marooned on a cliff. You brought me a great big food, and you gave me a lift. Girl, what a gift”, says James, thankful and fulfilled.

In these five years old friends left, as Marty Crandall and Jesse Sandoval. New smiling faces appeared, as Ron Lewis, Eric D. Johnson, and Modest Mouse’s Joe Plummer. A new record label, Aural Apothecary, owned by the same Mercer, and a new distribution through Columbia Records. Well, everything seemed changed for the Albuquerque’s artist, but Port Of Morrow is the result of a journey through circular routes rather than a straight fine line. Thus, Port Of Morrow lies not so far from 2007’s Wincing The Night Away, at least not in terms of sound and atmospheres. Where it seems 1000 years-light ahead is in terms of cohesion and adulthood.

Never in his career Mercer proved such a significant leap in consistency and style and, yes, easy to say, Port Of Morrow is by all chances the best we listened to this year so far, and the best Mercer has ever produced.

Still in charge of much of the project, Mercer masters voice, guitar, lap steel, glockenspiel, and of course the songwriting. From the orchestral Fall Of ’82, where the nostalgia of his words acts as counterpoint against his liquid and Elliot Smith’s-like pitch, to September, where the continuity with the early albums is apparent.

Hard to find a track that stands out, as the whole album is an ever-growing crescendo of details and reflections, as a gem changing its colours according to the light of its surrounding environment.

Port Of Morrow swept away the miserable wet winds of the winter and brought sunshine not only on this 2012 spring, but also on the whole indie-panorama.

 

Lorenzo Coretti