A basement bar at last call sets the scene for the first taste of Very Old Morris’ new record. The project shared “Ladies’ Darts Night,” the lead single from the forthcoming album ‘Boogedy Boogedy Boogedy Shoop’, out October 2 on vinyl, cassette and digital platforms. Very Old Morris is the solo project of San Antonio-based singer-songwriter Jerid Reed Morris of The Texases, featuring members of Sub Pop act Rose Windows.
The album lands as an irreverent love letter to ’90s radio country, the likes of Garth, George, and Alan, filtered through a contemporary alt-country lens. Recorded at Jett Bass Studios in Windcrest, Texas, it pairs pedal steel and fiddle with raucous guitars and surprise mariachis. Morris’ lean vocals dovetail with Jordan Bryant’s dulcet timbre and the band’s dense harmonies, cutting through the twang with something closer to dream-pop transcendence.
The lyrics swing between deadpan absurdity and emotional devastation. Opener “Howdy Arabia” plays out as a surrealist Western, “That’s No Way To Act” dissects modern masculinity over Gin Blossoms jangle, and closer “Long Oval” stops everything cold for a father-son reckoning about inheritance and forgiveness that earns its tears honestly.
The record also folds in two covers, Iron & Wine and Calexico’s “Sixteen, Maybe Less” rebuilt as a haunted his-and-hers duet with Bryant, and The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Thirty-Three” reborn as a banjo-driven two-stepper with a mariachi payoff. The eight originals carry the heart of it, a literate, hilarious, formula-subversive country record that sends up the genre’s greatest decade with real affection. Morris is just old enough to desecrate it properly, and the result sounds like nothing else out right now.