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GOOD MORNING
@ Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne
6th June, 2024
(Live Review)

Review by Sam Coronado

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Photo by Pooneh Ghana

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I first encountered the Melbourne duo Good Morning through their sleepy, bedroom dream-pop single ‘Warned You’, off of the 2014 album Shawcross. It’s a song right at home in a bedroom-pop playlist on Spotify: drenched in hazy vocals and psychedelic guitars. That the Melbourne Recital Centre seemed to me a far cry from not only this lo-fi indie sound, but also my mental image of the band, had me as intrigued as I was a bit apprehensive. I knew the venue and its acoustics from attending orchestral concerts and performing there in choirs through high school; it was an interesting, if a slightly perplexing, choice of location.

And so, I walked into the concert hall-like, grandiose Melbourne Recital Centre, and took my seat. Yes, sat down in my seat. That’s not something I’ve done at any gigs of this sort for a while. And I’m not sure that either Stefan Blair (vocals, guitar) or Liam Parsons (vocals, guitar, keys, synths) have been used to either – the latter jokingly brought up in between songs the “fancy f****** venue” to the laughter of the agreeable crowd.

My questions heading in were mostly centred around whether this bedroom sound that I associated with them would fill out the walls of the recital centre. Soon enough, however, they answered. The duo brought on stage with them a handful of proficient and very competent musicians to round out their band. They had a violin, a couple saxophones, a clarinet sometimes, and a duo of female vocalists to complement the fairly standard drum, bass and guitar indie band set up. And this paid off due to some excellent mixing, which led to none of the players ever being lost in even their densest arrangements. Even Blair’s father, who received the most casual of introductions from Blair, on clarinet and saxophone, was a highlight in his brief contributions during the first half of the setlist.

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It helps that since that brief exposure I’ve had to their earlier releases, the duo have flirted with more diverse instrumentation and varied soundscapes. The latest effort the duo released in March this year, Good Morning Seven, is possibly the album of theirs that encapsulates this the most, and it really did show as they drifted through the material. The newer tunes made full use of the group of musicians they brought along with them, and really went to show the strength of some of these densely layered arrangements. In these moments, such as with the memorable ‘Toy’ and ‘Just In Time’, they more than filled out the venue with their sound. In tunes such as these the group vocals of Blair, Parsons and their background vocalists were rich and warm, and the players all had moments to own.

Full credit to them here: a 21-song setlist is some touring artists’ entire catalogue, and they traverse it with relative ease. And in doing so, they show plenty of willingness to push their sound in different directions, with some of these avenues being particularly rewarding. Of course, not every route was; when they broke from the aforementioned full-band, densely arranged tunes to the pared-back, guitar-led cuts, I think the questionable fit for the venue’s acoustics and space became a bit more noticeable. These stripped-back moments often coincided with shorter tunes that I thought were a bit pale in comparison to the colourful material elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong, some of these slower, shorter cuts really landed; ‘As The Dogs Were Playing’ is a great, piano-led number that confronts its own dreamy atmosphere with some fantastic, fuzzy guitars. But others weren’t so adventurous, and perhaps that’s just a necessary compromise with the volume of material. Although I can’t help but compare the moments where it seemed like it all clicked to these brief and less successful moments.

Because ‘Excalibur’, one such moment where the stars seemed to align, is a really great tune. Again, the group vocals were a highlight, but the pared-back verses put a spotlight on Parsons’ songwriting and vocal performance, which here really shone. There is a distinct Australian tinge to his inflections in the almost spoken-word verses, that make you almost forget that Parsons has lived abroad in New York for some time now. That is, until he namedrops the Empire State Building in the lyrics.

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But if anyone forgot that this was a rare hometown (and homecoming) show, there was plenty of banter and short asides throughout the night in these brief interludes to remind them. They joke about coming home to Melbourne’s lack of sights. I mean, that lyric I mentioned before wouldn’t really work if Parsons mentioned the Eureka Skydeck. But even that characteristic, psychedelic dream-pop sound of theirs felt like the soundtrack to a Sydney Rd or Brunswick St. And a soundtrack too for that mid-20s to early-30s young adult straightening themselves out with a coffee from one of the overpriced cafes on either of those  It felt at times like they never left.

Parsons’ vocals were solid all night, with an unreleased track that is being referred to online as ‘Soft Rock’ being a standout for the night. The songs where Blair took lead vocals were fun as well, and ‘Real I’m Told’ is a highlight, but his guitar work was a clear strength. Of the duo it was Parsons who definitely improved his reputation from the studio recordings. While both can’t really claim a particularly unique singing voice, it’s a genre saturated with this sort, and I was impressed with the energy and presence throughout.

I would have loved to hear a few of the longer cuts from their latest album, which I consider some of the strongest, but I was pleased with the tracks they included from their back catalogue, such as ‘Oppsie’ and ‘Country’. Good Morning continue to put out and perform a brand of pleasant, dreamy psych-pop, and while they have long-since graduated from the lo-fi bedroom sound I first got acquainted with, I’d be eager to see them the next time they visit. Though they may have been more at home in a dive bar, or an old local haunt, all things considered the duo put together a pretty enjoyable hometown show.

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TRACKLIST

1. Arcade
2. Ahhhh (This Isn’t Ideal)
3. Monster Of The Week
4. As The Dogs Were Playing
5. The Worm Turns
6. Dog Years
7. Queen Of Comedy
8. The Lake
9. Diane Said
10. One Night
11. Excalibur
12. Real I’m Told
13. Just In Time
14. Toy
15. Jelly Legs
16. Dogs On The Beach
17. The Fear!

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Follow GOOD MORNING
23 Profile – Official Website – Instagram
Twitter – Bandcamp – Facebook

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About GOOD MORNING

Over the past decade, Good Morning have carved out a peculiar, hard-to-define indie career for themselves, amassing a global cult fanbase and hundreds of millions of streams despite (or perhaps because of) their defiantly DIY approach. The band/duo/recording-thing from Naarm / Melbourne, Australia come together as Stefan Blair (29, brown hair, 6 foot something) plays most of the instruments and sings half the songs. Liam Parsons (30, brown hair, 6 foot on the dot) plays the rest of the instruments and sings the other half of the songs.

The band name is intentionally impossible to Google but hasn’t gotten in the way of them getting shouted out by Tyler, The Creator, sampled by A$AP Rocky, going viral on TikTok (for their 2015 track ‘Warned You’), or touring the globe (including the US, Mexico, China, Japan, Thailand, and beyond). Their 2021 album Barnyard, both thoughtful and catchy, released internationally via Polyvinyl was met with widespread acclaim from Rolling Stone, NME, Stereogum, The Line Of Best Fit, Consequence, Alt Press, Paste, DIY Magazine, Northern Transmissions, KCRW, 6Music and more – setting the scene for their seventh record Good Morning Seven.

A moment in the two piece’s history, Good Morning Seven marks a significant shift for the duo who typically write and record independently from each other, in a matter of days, releasing albums, EPs and double tracks all in a quick sequence of each other. Their most ambitious project to date is made possible thanks to their own decade-long friendship. Liam and Stefan stretched days into longer periods of gestation, steadily developed their own studio spaces with gear accumulated or kindly borrowed, and a string of collaborators invited to contribute for the first time ever.

While it’s written, recorded, engineered, and produced solely by Good Morning, they further expand their world with an integrated community of contributors in mix engineer Tyler Karmen (Noname, DIIV, Devendra Banhart) with parts overdubbed at Stella Mozgawa’s (drummer of Warpaint) Joshua Tree studio, Fred Kevorkian (The White Stripes, Iggy Pop, The National, Willie Nelson) who mastered in Brooklyn, string arrangements by Chloe Sanger, Greer Clemens and Dannika Horvat on harmonies (the only guest vocalists on record to date), and Stefan’s father Glenn Blair even played woodwinds. The double album filled with strings, synths, samples and singing marks their 10th year anniversary of being a band. It’s all downhill from here.

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AMNPLIFY – DB