Kevin Morby has a mind that never sleeps. Over four albums in four years, he’s kept a pace that most songwriters would balk at—not because he’s chasing some prolific status, but because he’s just wired that way.
“I don’t have a very speedy personality,” he tells me. “I think of things very quickly and get sick of things very quickly.” That’s part of why City Music, his loose concept album about loneliness and urban life, exists at all. “I wanted to make the exact opposite of my last record.”
That previous album, Singing Saw, was an autobiographical ode to life in Los Angeles. City Music trades coasts—and perspectives. “This one’s more fictitious,” he explains. “It’s still about feeling isolated, but set in New York. I wrote it from the perspective of a reclusive older woman living uptown. Because, you know, I’m a young guy in L.A.—why not flip it?”
It’s a trick he enjoys, playing with gender roles and narrative voice. “When you give yourself an assignment like that, suddenly the album starts to build itself,” he says. “You’ve got your beginning, middle, and end. Then you just fill in the gaps.”
One of those gaps turned out to be “1234,” a track that feels like a scrappy punk zine thrown into a blender with the Basketball Diaries. It’s an homage to The Ramones that somehow also ropes in a Jim Carroll lyric—and it almost didn’t exist.
“I started it as a joke,” Morby admits. “I saw the hashtag #1234 somewhere and thought, ‘That’d be funny as a song.’ When I think of those numbers, I think of the Ramones. So I wrote a punk song, shouted all their names, and then tied it off with a line from Jim Carroll.”
It’s a song that punches you in the chest, especially if you recognize the reference. “Some people don’t even catch it,” he says, laughing. “They think I wrote the lyric, which is funny. But the people who know? They get this little wink.”
Unlike his previous albums, City Music leans heavier into live-band energy. “My studio records have always been bigger than my live shows,” he says. “I’d go out with just two or three people and we’d rock it up. So this time, I wanted to make a record that reflected that energy.”
He’s careful, though, to still keep it his record. “It’s more collaborative, sure, but it’s still a Kevin Morby album. There’s a line where it becomes a band project. I don’t think we’ve crossed it yet.”
That’s part of why he left his old bands behind. “In a set band, everything’s democratic,” he says. “You make every decision slowly, together. And that’s great when it works. But I wanted to try on different suits.”
And he’s not slowing down anytime soon. “We’ll do this again next year,” I joke. “You’ll have another album by then.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “I’m already working on it,” he says with a grin. “Might be a double.”
Listen to the interview above and check out the video to Aboard My Train below.
