On the list of behind-the-scenes figures in Texas music, Gurf Morlix looms large. As a sideman and producer, he’s been indispensable to artists from Lucinda Williams to Blaze Foley, and worked on records by Patty Griffin, Robert Earl Keen, Butch Hancock, and more. As a solo artist, meanwhile, he’s had more of an under-the-radar career: his ninth album, The Soul & The Heal, was released on Friday, and its dark, country-tinged blues recalls Tom Waits, the woods on the edge of town, and lonely highways at night.
The latter two images are a big part of the video for “Cold Here Too,” a haunting tune from the album that’s half-whispered, half-sung over ringing guitars and slowly stomping drums—something that might make for a good soundtrack cut from a new season of True Detective, maybe, which is the sort of comparison Morlix invites when he talks about the song.
“You never know where a song will come from. You just have to keep your antennae up,” he says. ” A bit of overheard conversation, a line from a book, a thought that wakes you up in the middle of the night… Mostly, I think the songs are just floating around in the ether, just outside our reach, and sometimes we sense it, and we manage to reach up and catch one.”
Morlix deals with noir in this song’s writing. “Dark and mysterious,” he describes as the aesthetic. “Part nightmare, part bitter taste of truth. Foggy, but frighteningly real.” Watch the video below:
