If honky-tonk country were written in haiku, Gurf Morlix could be the music’s zen master. Though the Austin-based Morlix remains best-known as an ace producer/guitarist (from Lucinda Williams through Ray Wylie Hubbard and Slaid Cleaves), his third solo album showcases his distinctive songwriting. Terse and laconic, he reduces each lyric to its bare-bones essence, as if he’s singing in Morse code or emotional shorthand.
Morlix sets the mood with the album-opening enigma, “Yesterday She Didn’t”: “Yesterday she didn’t/But today she does/What I’d been dreamin’/Became what was/Now I’m in heaven/And it’s all because/Yesterday she didn’t/And today she does.” Didn’t what? Does what? Doesn’t matter. Without wasting a syllable, Morlix has found the common denominator between the classic country & western of Hank Williams and the inscrutable eastern mysticism of “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
A song such as “Were You Lyin’ Down?” is little more than a hard-twanging hook — “Were you lyin’ down when you stood me up?” — and little less than perfect, a tune that would fit just fine amid the best of Buck Owens. And I’d love to hear Jimmie Dale Gilmore apply his warble to the heartbreak falsetto of “I’ll Change”, the vow from a lovesick man to accomplish the impossible (“I’ll change to win back your love/I’ll rearrange the stars above”).
Songwriting just doesn’t get more succinct than “The Whole Truth”, in which the singer ponders a choice — “Two roads/High and low/Up or down?/Which way to go?” — before resolving, “I’ve got half a mind to tell the whole truth.…Blow it up, let the pieces fall.” With drummer Rick Richards providing all the outside support that multi-instrumentalist Morlix requires (except for harmony vocals from Linda McRae on one cut), every note counts as much as every word.
