One great thing about Santa Barbara's DIY troubadour Existential Hero (Steven Ray Morris) is that he's prolific. He is up to seven albums at press time (not counting EP's and splits) and he's not about to stop now. Album five"The Storm of the Century" kicks off his multi-album concept project called "The New Zealand Trilogy" (guess where it was mostly recorded?) and is a quite interesting genre-bleeding menagerie of pop, psychedelia, and hip hop.
It has its share of undeniable gems - memorable opener "You're Always Late" sounds like a driving early Daniel Johnston tune with a dash of Tom Waits and a whole lotta angst. My favorite "She Aches, She Makes, But Will She Break" is a piece of shy, stripped down perfection set to an understated harmonica and baritone ukulele. Morris brings the garage rock on "Deep Conversations", while "Clear Clear Clear" brings out the existential hero in all of us -a wonderfully frustrated ode to helpless, homesick frustration.
Unfortunately, Morris seems to have a penchant for overproduction and an overambitious musical scope, making "The Storm Of The Century", in some ways, a spotty album. Case in point, the momentum of the excellent opener "You're Always Late" is immediately leavened by the kind of tuneless and joyless "Waiting For The View". "Meet in Japan" has plenty of great ideas but the overuse of ambient sound effects makes me not really want to return to it. Morris finds his strongest moments when he simply lets his songs be and sticks to what he does best, and when he does this, he leaves me with an indelible impression.
Overall, I enjoyed listening to "The Storm Of The Century" - the weaker tracks are worth sitting through in order for wonderful rewards like "Ginny O", "She Aches, She Breaks...", and the title track. The simpler songs are what Existential Hero does best, and if a bit of the excess was trimmed, we would really have a solid front-to-back listen. However, as it is, it's a well-made and highly entertaining album which stays true to Steven Ray Morris's boundlessly creative musical vision.
myspace.com/existentialheromusic
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