The phrase “spiritual, not religious” carries a seed of derision that makes it difficult to take seriously. On the surface, it is a simple this-not-that statement. But it can often betray a sense of superiority and exclusion in its implied critique of a practice known for superiority and exclusion. (To be sure, the phrase’s evangelical Christian first cousin, “I’m not religious, I just have a relationship with Jesus,” elicits the same eye rolls from me.)
When indie-rock singer Kevin Morby expresses the sentiment, however, it doesn’t feel like a subtle jab at his religious neighbors. “I don’t belong to any religion,” he said in a 2019 interview. “I’m definitely a spiritual person, but in terms of organized religion, I don’t associate with anything.”
Religious Lexicon
But those who have listened to Morby’s music know not to confuse his matter-of-fact declaration of non-attachment to religion with indifference or even contempt. Morby has been a curious observer of the religious landscape around him since childhood.
Born in Lubbock and raised in Kansas City, that landscape was textured with language rooted in Christian imagery. “As a kid, I was fascinated by [religious language] in the same way I was fascinated by the Wild West or cowboys,” he said in another interview. It is a language Morby speaks so fluently in his music that it would be easy to assume it’s his native tongue.
Morby’s fascination with the mythmaking power of Biblical terminology flourished in his 2019 album, Oh My God, which has been described as a “spiritual album for a secular age.” That work examined how the lexicon of Christianity is so deeply embedded in our collective imagination that we couldn’t escape it, even if we tried.
I am a latecomer to Morby’s music, discovering him last year through Mavis Staples’ cover of his 2016 song “Beautiful Strangers.” Morby wrote the song in response to the Pulse nightclub shooting, the killing of Freddie Gray, and the 2015 terror attacks on Paris. In recent live performances, he has updated the lyrics to protest ICE actions across the country.
Little Wide Open
(Photo by Chantal Anderson)
If “Beautiful Strangers” is Morby’s secular exploration of the social gospel, his latest album, Little Wide Open, is him wading through the contemplative and mystical streams of American Christian vocabulary. Released in May and clocking in at just under an hour, Little Wide Open is a 13-track masterpiece that dances between wide-open sacred lands with whimsical reverence.
In “Badlands,” the album’s opening track, Morby tips his hat to Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth,” beckoning listeners on a metaphorical road trip through the places we call home and, eventually, die. The song draws on his deep bag of poetic tricks, one of which is repeating the front end of a phrase as a mantra that leads the listener to mentally fill in the blank for the back half, only for Morby to do a switcheroo with a different word.
I can’t tell if I’m in heaven, if I’m in
I can’t tell if I’m in heaven, if I’m in
I can’t tell if I’m in heaven, if I’m in
I can’t tell if I’m in heaven, or if I’m in the badlands.
Replacing “hell” with “badlands” is more than a cute turn of phrase. It invites us to reconsider our very notions of heaven and hell, life and death, with both wild places containing immeasurable beauty and pain. This device repeats itself throughout Little Wide Open.
Another linguistic toy Morby plays with throughout the album is leading listeners to believe a word serves only as a noun, only to learn later that it was also intended as a verb. This recurring theme shows up in unexpected places, but most clearly in the opening lines of the title track:
Sometimes we diamond
Sometimes we dust
Sometimes we golden
Sometimes we rust
Morby uses these devices so effortlessly that I probably listened to Little Wide Open 20 times before I realized it is a concept album. I fell in love with certain lyrics and themes that, only later, did I realize were showing up in every track. What sounds like a collection of thoughtful songs turns out to be wisdom literature that mirrors much of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Weeping and laughter, mourning and dancing, run throughout the entire project.
It’s difficult to extract a lyric that best represents the beauty of Little Wide Open, but one from country-infused “Bible Belt” comes about as close as any other:
And if you get lost
Go looking for a cross
That’s haunting some highway
Pinned down by some skyway
Listen to it talk
Say, “Hey, you going my way?”
I am just passing by
Through that by-and-by
Going nowhere in particular
Like some strange and ancient wild bird
Other notable tracks include “Javelin,” which you must listen to with your windows down and hands blowing in the breeze, and “All Sinners,” which speaks to the ancient human hope that heaven is more than just a place on earth.
Little Wide Open was released on the Dead Oceans label and was produced by Aaron Dessner from The National.
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.