2024 has already been a pivotal year for Good Morning’s Stefan Blair and Liam Parson. The Australian “soft rock band” released their seventh project (an ambitious double LP aptly titled Good Morning Seven), opened for Waxahatchee and Frankie Cosmos in the US, and celebrated a decade together as a duo. Despite these career highs, in retrospect, there was an air of cynicism and practicality-induced worry underlying the album’s rollout.
Blair explained that their wistful, psychedelic single “Ahhhh (This Isn’t Ideal),” released at the top of the year, initially reflected his feelings about being in the band at that time, but the lyrics evolved towards the general theme of searching for contentment in life. He explained: “Sorta like I grew up wanting to make music for a living, and now that just makes me anxious and suspicious? Just like people I know who go down the path of getting married and having kids etc yet still struggle with their dependencies on drugs and alcohol — nothing’s ever truly ideal, but you gotta appreciate those in between moments when you’re not overwhelmed by it all.” A dream can be beautiful, while the reality to it is ugly; time moves, people change, idealism fades.
That uncertainty echoed throughout interviews a month before Seven’s release. “I’m constantly wondering what next — what happens after I’m not playing music any more?” Blair shared. “As I get older, I get more and more unemployable in every other facet of life. What the fuck will I do?” Parson added: “It’s like waiting for that shoe to drop, being like, ‘This is gonna turn to shit.’ Every day that it doesn’t I’m like, ‘Cool, made it.’” Seven, which at the time they’d been sitting on for over three years, only abstractly hinted at these anxieties. Looking back, it seems as if they were actually gesturing at transitory themes of an album that we didn’t know existed yet. Good Morning had already finished the double LP’s follow-up The Accident, which they only announced last week and are also billing as their last album. It’s also their best — a 30-minute opus that feels like an exorcism of stress and a sigh of relief.
The Accident feels like a gradual acceptance of the moment’s that inevitably pass, made with the desperation to keep creative juices flowing while running towards burnout with their yet-to-be released project. “We’re not really fighters, (we’re way too passive for that), but given that we’re making a new record at the same time as already getting sick of thinking about the old one, an air of burn out and band related bum out seems to find its way into much of the lyrics,” the duo shared. The result isn’t as expansive or polished as Seven. In its initial creation, The Accident was Good Morning’s first time going solely digital as a consequence of a broken 8-track machine. After extensively running it through layers of tape and spring reverb, the final product has a refined fuzzy warpedness to it that recalls a honed in approach to their earlier recordings — a brilliant time capsule wrestling with time itself.
Maybe it’s the looming hiatus, but the most impactful moments from The Accident come when Good Morning attempt to reconcile the nonsensicality of time. Creative catharsis becomes a time-consuming obligation that barely pays the bills. “And the pleasures in waiting for the pleasure to be through/ Then the happiness comes just a minute or two,” goes a stealth line on album highlight “A Telephone Rings.” Sometimes life feels like an endless cycle of unmet expectation, constant delayed satisfaction. “I know time is a straight line, but I’m looking for curves,” the band sings on lead single and “Soft Rock Band,” the album’s grand eight-minute epic finale that’s about becoming by way of unbecoming in the spirit of ever-evolving self-mythology.
But it’s the striking opener “Baby Steps” that captures a hallucinatory panic of trying to keep up with time. There’s mention of the Beatles’ AI track, catastrophic wildfires, and an existential crisis driven by familial comparison. It builds like a polite panic attack as heaving breaths, fuzzy zaps, and vocals increase with urgency over a rudimentary drum beat. Mantras of endurance (“I gotta work sometimes,” “It’ll work sometimes,” “It’s gotta work sometimes,” and “It’s gonna work sometimes”) wither away from a building chaos, eventually leading to a state of mind that feels unfortunately too normal nowadays: “I will dissociate.” On the The Accident, Good Morning make a beautiful struggle out of harsh realities that transform romanticized ideals into ghosts.
There’s a melancholic warmth to The Accident that’s immensely comforting, like driving through your childhood home after creating another life elsewhere. There are parts that remind me of Yellow Submarine — brief, psychedelic moments that feel like black holes. “The Grateful Dead” opens with sonar blips, melodic bleeps, a ticking clock, and a distant clash before an acoustic guitar and sleepy vocals anchor in its expansive sea of time. “Let’s make time disappear,” Blair gently requests at one point, and indeed, the album seems to exist outside of time.
The Accident is a reckoning. One creative dream frustrated by reality leads to the birth of another one — suspended between burnout and catharsis, breathing in both contradictions. Ultimately, The Accident is a comforting response to the fractures caused by time’s inevitability. Parson and Blair are transparent about the creative industry’s withering of youthful optimism. But instead of an overwhelming sense that everything is frivolous, we’re still left believing the fleeting moments of beauty are worth chasing.
The Accident is out 11/29 via Good Morning Music Company Worldwide.
Other albums of note out this week:
• Kodak Black’s Trill Bill
• The Innocence Mission’s Midwinter Swimmers
• Juice WRLD’s The Party Never Ends
• Joey McIntye’s Freedom
• Aisha Badru’s The Sun Still Rises
• Hidden Mothers’ Erosion / Avulsion
• OCS’ Live At Permanent Records
• Rikuto Fujimoto’s Distant Landscapes
• Ben Lukas Boysen’s Alta Ripa
• total tommy’s bruises
• Juanita Stein’s The Weightless Hour
• Gregor Tresher’s False Gods
• Ava Rasti’s The River
• Marilyn Manson’s One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1
• PANELIA’s Nothing And All At Once
• Sunroof’s Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 3
• Brian Nasty’s Anywhere, But Here With You
• Will August Park’s Doff
• Bedsore’s Dreaming The Strife For Love
• Sasha’s Da Vinci Genius
• The Last Poets’ Africanism
• Sech’s Tranki, Todo Pasa
• Sakura Tsuruta’s GEMZ
• Des Demonas’ Apocalyptic Boom! Boom!
• Blinker The Star’s Occult Classic
• Eric Clapton’s Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival 2023 Live Album
• Echo & The Bunnymen’s What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? 25th Anniversary Deluxe Reissue
• Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers’ Live In Edinburgh 1982: The Gennaro Tapes
• WAR’s The Collection 1977-1994 Box Set
• Various artists’ Harry Potter: Original Motion Picture Soundtracks I-VII box set
• Various artists’ Second Shot compilation
• Stella Bridie’s Speaking Terms EP
• Vial’s Grow The Fuck Up EP (Rerecorded)
• Parcels’ Leaveyourlove Remix EP
