New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Today, Major Murphy - Jacob Bullard (guitar, vocals), Jacki Warren (bass, vocals), Brian Voortman (drums), and Chad Houseman (guitar, keys, percussion) - announce the impending release of their sophomore album Access, out April 02 on Winspear.
Already pegged as one of Vice Noisey's 10 Albums That Will Get You Excited For 2021,
Access finds the Grand Rapids, MI-based group summoning an exhilarating, teenage feeling of musical possibility as they navigate the uncertainty of artistic life and Jacob & Jacki's newfound parenthood while seeking a sense of agency in the new unknown. With a sturdy and poetic architecture housing some of the most inviting, immediate rock music of this young decade, the nine songs on Access are a crystallization of Jacob Bullard and his band's burgeoning ambition.
Katie Crutchfield of
Waxahatchee describes lead single "
Access" as "a conduit for the grand and complex structures Bullard builds throughout the album. It's as much a personal plea for patience and humility as it is a pep talk for setting the bar high and working hard to ascend."
In five years, Major Murphy has evolved from three jamming roommates into the four piece it is now. Members Bullard and Voortman met Warren while they were opening for Jacki's former band The Soil & The Sun. Bound by a love for bands from Wings to Junip, the three started playing together regularly, plucked their band name out of an extraterrestrial themed book, and, with the help of Winspear, got off the ground releasing two home recorded EPs in 2015 and 2017. The band's debut LP No. 1 was soon to follow in 2018. Together, with the help of longtime collaborator but newly minted member, Chad Houseman, Access became the band's first attempt at a more deliberate and conceptual creation.
While the album unspools with a seeming effortlessness, the making of Access was a deliberate, time-consuming process. Recorded at Russian Recording in Bloomington, IN between late 2018 and early 2020 with Mike Bridavsky and Ben Lumsdaine, Access seeks to recreate the imagined worlds that were inspired by when Bullard first fell in love with music as a teen. Rather than fastidious string arrangements or painstaking drum programming, Major Murphy were striving to build sonic monuments to an idealized concept of rock music — an effervescent restoration of classic, heavy rock'n'roll sounds imbued with a jittery, hyper-creative energy that can be partially attributed to presence of Bullard and Warren's young son Benji in the studio.
The collision of this youthful approach to the record's sound and the themes of adulthood's uncertainty found throughout Access are, in a way, the crowning achievement of the album. Whether it's the rocket-boosted guitars of "In the Meantime" serving as a means to process a health scare, the loping percussion of "Unfazed" soundtracking the vertigo one gets when they consider the mass of responsibilities they need to attend to or Bullard singing "Close your eyes /
Fireflies rise / through the cracks in your mind" on "Real" as a recounting of teaching Benji how to breathe through his nose, Access is a project about the aspiration to resilience and accountability that nonetheless maintains an appreciation of the unknowable and sublime. As Katie Crutchfield writes in the project bio:
"It's an album that's remarkably cohesive - a striking relic in an age where ardent and true "album-making" is a fading art form. In nine songs, it somehow takes a listener backwards & forwards at once, reckoning with intrinsic anxieties while conceptualizing a fantastical and vibrant happening, soothing in its familiar, occasionally childlike tone."
Deluxe pre-order available with a limited edition publication of 100 copies that documents the band's recording process and features exclusive behind the scenes studio photos and album lyrics. The 40 page, tabloid size newsprint acts as a companion piece to the album, giving listeners further access into the world of Major Murphy. Published in conjunction with the project's creative directors and independent book publishers, New Archive.
Praise For Major Murphy:
"In 2018, Major Murphy released what's perhaps the city's best debuts ever in their excellent No. 1, which combined buoyant McCartney-inspired pop with scrappy jangle." - Vice Noisey
"Easy, gorgeous harmonies, shimmering production, and timeless subject matter." - Gorilla vs. Bear
"The dynamic structures of vocal harmonies between songwriter Jacob Bullard and bassist Jacki Warren are impeccably crafted." - Uproxx
"Dreampop inspired by the lighter side of the '70s — more Laurel Canyon than yacht rock — with a lovely magic hour vibe to what they do." - Brooklyn Vegan
"Easy like a Sunday morning and twinged with the nostalgic sound Major Murphy has come to master." - -The Wild
Honey Pie
ACCESS TRACKLIST:
1. Access
2. Attention
3. In the Meantime
4. Unfazed
5. Real
6. Rainbow
7. Tear It Apart
8. Flower
9. Blind
Website: www.majormurphy.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/majormurphyband
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/majormurphy
Twitter: https://twitter.com/majormurphyband
Bandcamp: https://majormurphy.bandcamp.com
