Flo Morrissey
If you're after a quick way to feel ancient, just think about how 20-year-old Londoner Flo Morrissey discovered the likes of Joanna Newsom, CocoRosie, and Devendra Banhart in her dad's car when she was nine or 10 years old. Recently reissued documentary The Family Jams chronicles the innocent days of freak folk, the painfully amateur footage mirroring a shambolic summer tour spent rejoicing in the hands. A decade on, a pristine redux of the collective's influence manifests in Morrissey's debut, aided by the production of scene original Noah Georgeson. Complementing Morrissey's piercing melismatics are softly thumbed acoustic guitars, very familiar harp motifs, and cosmic accents, along with a plush string section and period wardrobe.
Although Morrissey reaches back a decade and way beyond, to the likes of Karen Dalton, Nick Drake, and Vashti Bunyan, Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful feels like an accurate representation of right now. She's part of a raft of privileged British musicians who can afford to be earnest and wide-eyed about the world, but it's something she does better than most of them. It's strange to see a generation wholeheartedly embrace their parents' tastes during a period of socio-political turmoil, and there's no grit in Morrissey's Vaseline lens.
Her voice is incredibly pure and agile: she's a drowsy Kate Bush, or Jessica Pratt's choirgirl little sister. But every song drowns in over-arrangements, perhaps in an attempt to mask a fairly persistent lack of melody. The exceptions are lovely. The verse of "Pages of Gold" floats on clouds of warped electric guitar, before a robust, skyward chorus that would have amply fit First Aid Kit's last record. Similarly weightless is "If You Can't Love This All Goes Away", which features Morrissey's most understated and affecting vocal performance.
Morrissey's lyrics avoid hippie affect for plainspoken admission, telling a timeless coming-of-age story across 10 songs. The glinting "Show Me", written when she was 15, crystallizes the moment where childhood starts receding into the past. ("I've begun to see my life/ It's so different once it's been shone in its new light.") She forgives and gently warns a friend who's now seeing her manipulative ex on "Sleeplessly Dreaming", which has a little French chanson in its gait. By the end of Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful, she's reveling in the budding promise of pleasure in self-knowledge. "This joy I'm now feeling is much more real/ I'll begin again as a seedling, running far to the fields", she sings on the flinching "Wildflower" amid starry harp. Morrissey has often talked about exaggerating her feelings in song to make up for her youthful lack of experience, but within the lavish Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful is a songwriter whose knack for subtle self-assertion needs bringing to the fore, not dressing up in quirk.
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