New York, NY (Top40 Charts) NPR
Music today premiered a new song by
Glenn Morrow's Cry for Help. The song, "Days to Come," may be heard on the eponymous
Glenn Morrow's Cry for Help, out June 23, 2017 on Rhyme & Reason Records. The album is a winning amalgam of energetic guitar blues, mesmerizing Velvets-style rhythms and grooves, sardonic storytelling, and the sort of no-frills, straight-to-the-gut alternative rock that Hoboken, New Jersey is famous for.
NPR's Songs We Love premiere and feature appears here: https://n.pr/2rdcXIA
According to writer Jim Allen at NPR Music, "The steadily surging, midtempo rocker finds Morrow searching for ways to keep his inner flame alight in perpetuity."
Morrow says of "Days to Come," "The opening chord sequence was something I wrote in my 20s that I had never been able to work into a song and I finally did! The rest of it was initially inspired by the band Television but then I thought about the cascading melodies of some
Squeeze songs and the end effect was closer to something the Kinks might have come up with by way of the
Modern Lovers. Basically it's a song about fighting to find adventure and fun in the future with the ones you love despite diminishing returns!"
Call Morrow a local legend, and he'd probably demur: he's a modest guy, and he prefers to let his songs do the talking. But in Hoboken - a town that has always celebrated idiosyncratic rock musicians — people know better. Morrow has been central to musical movements in the Mile
Square City for more than three decades, both as a songwriter/performer and as the head honcho of Bar/None Records, an imprint that has always flown the flag for courageous artists. He was one of the first musicians to play at Maxwell's, the epicenter of the scene for decades, and when Maxwell's closed in 2013 to great fanfare (it's since reopened under new management) it was Morrow onstage with his old bands the Individuals and "a" to bring the curtain down. That show — plus a thorough re-reading of music critic Robert Palmer's Deep Blues and a thorough engagement with classic records - inspired Morrow's latest project.
"After the show at Maxwell's, I felt like I had a clean slate from which to write," he says. "A portal I hadn't been able to access for a long time reopened in my brain. Thanks to a long-overdue trip to Memphis, I found myself going back to school to really dig into everything that informed the music I liked over the years."
You don't need to know any of that to enjoy the heck out of
Glenn Morrow's Cry for Help. Morrow's latest project makes lean, economical, witty rock music: party-starting music. But the backstory does help explain why the band sounds simultaneously rooted in history and altogether fresh — and why the musicians play with the sort of urgency and hunger characteristic of brash new bands. For decades, through Bar/None and other projects, Morrow has stayed engaged in contemporary alternative rock music. And it shows.
Produced by Ray Ketchem (Elk City, Okkervil River, Bird of Youth) in his
Orange Road Studio in Montclair,
Glenn Morrow's Cry For Help is eleven tracks of smart, sharp, varied rock.
Live Dates:
Sun., June 11 HOBOKEN, NJ Hokboken
Music & Arts Festival, 8th Street Stage
Fri., June 16 FAIR LAWN, NJ Stosh's
Wed., June 21 JERSEY CITY, NJ Groove On
Fri., June 23 HOBOKEN, NJ
Little City Books
Wed., June 28 NEW YORK, NY The Hi Fi Bar
