Kevin Morby Announces New Album City Music, Releases First Single

It’s been just under a year since Kevin Morby released his excellent third album, Singing Saw, but the indie-rock singer-songwriter is already coming back for more, announcing today that he will be releasing a new record, City Music, this summer.

If the title didn’t tip you off, City Music is an album inspired by “the metropolitan experience across America and beyond,” according to a press release, with Morby describing it at “a mix-tape, a fever dream, a love letter dedicated to those cities that I cannot get rid of, to those cities that are all inside of me.’ It’s intended to serve both as a companion and counterpart to Singing Saw, tackling some of the same themes of solitude, but through a different stylistic lens.

As Morby explains it, “Saw was imagined as an old bookshelf with a young Bob and Joni staring back at me, blank and timeless. They live here, in this left side of my brain, smoking cigarettes and playing acoustic guitars while lying on an unmade bed,” whereas the new album is more “Lou Reed and Patti Smith … stretched out on a living room floor somewhere in mid-70s Manhattan, also smoking cigarettes.”

That Lou Reed influence is particularly notable in the vocals on City Music’s opening track and lead single “Come To Me Now.” The somber song is built around the slow churn of an old, 1800s pump organ, which Morby says he didn’t even think would work when he first came across it in the studio, but which ended up being his “favorite part of the record to record.”

City Music is out June 16 via Dead Oceans and available for preorder here. You can check out the lyric video for “Come To Me Now” below, along with the album’s cover art and tracklist, and Morby’s full slate of tour dates, which includes stops at festivals like Bonnaroo, Boston Calling, and Newport Folk Fest, where he’ll be appearing as part of “Alone & Together”, a collaboration between him, Fruit Bats’ Eric D. Johnson, former Yeloowbirds frontman Sam Cohen (who produced Singing Saw), Joe Russo and Josh Kaufman.

Also, for what it’s worth, a few weeks back, Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold posted a picture to Instagram, which you can also see below, of him in the studio with Kevin and the caption “Garfunkel-ing for Morby,” so while we don’t know if he’s on this record for certain, keep your ears open for some Robin Pecknold harmonies.

City Music Album Art:

City Music Tracklist:
01. Come To Me Now
02. Crybaby
03. 1234
04. Aboard My Train
05. Dry Your Eyes
06. Flannery
07. City Music
08. Tin Can
09. Caught In My Eye
10. Night Time
11. Pearly Gates
12. Downtown’s Lights

Kevin Morby Tour Dates:

March
22 – Cincinnati, Ohio @ The Woodward Theater*
23 – Pittsburgh, Pa. @ Carnegie Lecture Hall of Oakland*
24 – Toronto, Ontario @ Longboat Hall*
25 – Montréal, Quebec @ Théâtre Plaza*
26 – Burlington, Vt. @ ArtsRiot*
28 – Portland, Maine @ Port City Music Hall*
29 – Hamden, Conn. @ The Ballroom at The Outer Space*
30 – Jersey City, N.J. @ Monty Hall*
31 – Jersey City, N.J. @ Monty Hall*

April
01 – Carlisle, Pa. @ The Trellis at Dickinson College*
02 – Baltimore, Md. @ Creative Alliance*

May
23 – Washington, D.C. @ Rock and Roll Hotel
24 – New York, N.Y. @ Bowery Ballroom
26 – Philadelphia, Pa. @ Johnny Brenda’s
27 – Allston, Mass. @ Boston Calling

June
01 – Barcelona, Spain @ Primavera Sound
03 – London, U.K. @ Field Day
04 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso
08-11 – Manchester, Tenn. @ Bonnaroo
23-25 – North Adams, Mass. @ Solid Sound Festival
27 – Gothenburg, Sweden @ Pustervik
28 – Roskilde, Denmark @ Roskilde Festival

July
02 – Berlin, Germany @ Quasimodo
03 – Frankfurt, Germany @ Zoom
05 – Düdingen, Germany @ Bad Bonn
07 – Soliera/Modena, Italy @ Artivive
09 – Brugge, Belgium @ Cactusfestival
11 – Paris, France @ Le Trabendo
13 – Lisbon, Portugal @ Super Bock Super Rock
15 – Dour, Belgium @ Dour Festival
16 – Southwold, U.K. @ Latitude
28 – Newport, R.I. @ Newport Folk Festival^

(* – Solo show, co-headlining with Waxahatchee)
(^ – “Alone & Together” w/ Eric D. Johnson, Sam Cohen, Joe Russo and Josh Kaufman)