Morly “Twain Harte”

“Twain Harte" by Morly is Northern Transmissions Song of the Day
“Twain Harte" by Morly

Multi-artist Morly, AKA: Katy Morley, recently released “Twain Harte,” the single is her first new material as Morly since 2017. After establishing her singular style with a series of EPs — In Defense of My Muse (2015), Something More Holy (2016) and Sleeping In My Own Bed (2017) — she took some necessary time away from the public eye as she battled chronic illness.

“Twain Harte” revealed itself to Morly as she found herself falling in love with someone across the Atlantic. The Minneapolis-born artist relocated from her homebase in Los Angeles to London this year, joining her partner, who was “a beam of light irrupting into the darkness” of deteriorating health. Written across the three cities, “Twain Harte” paints a portrait of realizing you’re in love: “So when you call me from tomorrow / asking how I feel today,” she sings. “All I’m saying is / I’m so in love with you.”

The song begins with Morly’s vocals accompanied by Jesse Carmichael on piano, with Adam MacDougall and strings and bass by producer Chris Stracey (Bag Raiders). The single blends Morly’s love of classic acoustic songwriting and minimal electronic music. “I think Bob Dylan’s “Mama, You Been On My Mind” was reverberating through me as I wrote ‘Twain Harte,’” she notes. “The power of a really simple small song, a single thought distilled and magnified. I was listening to a lot of Sade and old jazz recordings at the time as well, which I think gave me the gumption to write a pure, unapologetic love song.”

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