Kevin Morby Finds Heaven and the Badlands in the Same Place

Kevin Morby has spent the better part of his career making records about place — what it feels like to be from somewhere, to leave it, to carry it around. “Badlands,” the third single from Little Wide Open, is maybe the clearest distillation of that obsession yet. It’s about Kansas City, and more broadly the Midwest — the big sky, the small lives, the tornado sirens. Morby is joined on the track by Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, whose harmonies are specifically meant to sound like tornado sirens. That detail is very Kevin Morby.

Little Wide Open arrives May 15 on Dead Oceans, produced by Aaron Dessner at his Long Pond Studio in Stuyvesant, NY. Dessner — who plays multiple instruments across the record — reportedly held Morby back from throwing too many tricks at the songs and let the stories stand on their own. The result, by Morby’s own account, is the most personal and vulnerable album he’s ever made. The guest list runs deep: Meath, Vernon, Katie Gavin, Lucinda Williams, Mat Davidson, Meg Duffy, and more.

Morby describes Little Wide Open as the third in an unintentional trilogy following Sundowner (2020) and This Is a Photograph (2022) — records that catalogued his time in middle America after moving back to Kansas City. Now primarily based in LA, there’s a new restlessness in these songs, a sense of hurtling toward something unseen. The comparison Morby reaches for is Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, and that’s not a reach. Pre-order it below, then find a date on what looks like a very full summer.

Pre-order Little Wide Open ↗