Morning Glory – War Psalms

Morning Glory blew the punk rock community away when they released their pivotal debut, Poets Were My Heroes.  The shear scale was both overwhelmingly huge and intimately personal.  Few artists can communicate at the level of introspection demonstrated by Ezra Kire – listeners were made to feel as if they were in Kire’s head, face to face with haunting inner demons, feeling the pain of addiction and withdrawal with a gritty pairing of piano, strings, ragged vocals and messy chords.

By contrast, follow-up War Psalms opts to open Morning Glory up to the world with global themes of injustice and corruption.  In doing so the band’s guitars have expanded to a sweltering size in which you can all but see the sweat dripping from each band member’s heated brow as they shred through riffs like a chainsaw through an unlucky limb.  Tracks like “I Am Machine Gun” hold the balance between symphonic anthem and hard and heavy rocker with the same instrumental drive and conviction as Poets Were My Heroes.  But the pendulum has definitely swung further from where it started, so many of the similarities end there. 

Aside from a few periodic compositional inserts, War Psalms is first and foremost a straightforward punk rock record with a ton of energy to burn.  Take the vocal strain and rapid fire pacing of opener “Calm and Alarm” leading into the chorus heavy call to arms “Standard Issue.”  Kire doesn’t tiptoe around this time, but rather gets right in listeners faces with his higher pitch wails (think AFI) and blistering guitar performance (easy parallels to a less structured Strung Out).  Musically, songs like “Nationality Anthem” and “Punx Not Dead, I Am” push the envelope and take full advantage from the newer direction.

But returning to Kire’s cleaner vocals, the change sacrifices much of his gravelly personality for a pitchier tone.  It’s a tough call to weigh the effect of the trade-off, but it’s a safe bet that fans of Kire’s rougher personae will undoubtedly miss his more down-to-earth, direct moments.  Even the wholly piano-driven breather “Karry On” feels like a missed opportunity by lacking that same essential grit.  Only on album closer “Home Free” does Kire dip back into that rough reality, leaving listeners questioning why it took to long to surface on the nearly fourty minute album.   

While Morning Glory’s stylistic differences make for some questionable sonic decisions, War Psalm’s lyrics serve as the most significant limitation.  Simply put, the songs are less interesting to follow along with than those on Poets Were My Heroes.  Although the instrumental ambitions heighten momentary engagement, very few tracks “pop” at the level that Kire’s more personal and vulnerable work.  It’s all a familiar tale of grand scale resistance told through the lens of a punk rock revolutionary.  The songs don’t really challenge listeners beyond face value or reach the past level of profoundness.

War Psalms is a disappointing follow-up to Poets Were My Heroes but a very good stand-alone release.  Where Poets Were My Hero defined its year of release, War Psalms stands shoulder to shoulder with many of this year’s great albums and is well worth checking out despite feeling like a step forward musically and a step backward lyrically.  If Morning Glory’s next album can find a balanced middle ground between the two, then they will once again rise above the rest and prove that the third (and first) time is a charm.