The new album will be released on March 22.
Good Morning today announce their most expansive and experimental release yet, the 17-track double album Good Morning Seven due March 22 via Good Morning Music Company Worldwide (AUNZ) and Polyvinyl (ROW). With the news they share the latest double release "Just In Time" and "Ahhhh (This Isn't Ideal)" shortly after their Waxahatchee US tour support was announced earlier this month.
Good Morning Seven marks a pivotal moment in the band's history, a product of the investment (and pay-off) in taking time. Historically the duo of Liam Parsons and Stefan Blair write and record independently from each other, in a matter of days, releasing albums, EPs and double tracks all in quick succession of each other - until now.
"We built a studio at the end of 2020 and spent the next year and a half writing and recording this record," they explain. "The last three Good Morning albums were made in a matter of days, so we wanted to stretch out and take a long time on this one."
Narrowing down 70 songs penned in preparation for their seventh album, the cohesive 17 that you'll see on the 51-minute double record - their longest yet - come together as Good Morning's most ambitious project to date. 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.
The resulting Good Morning Seven sees Good Morning display a confident creative partnership, with every intentional step laid out for indulgence.
Of the record, the band share "We talked about wanting to make a more melodic, brighter record - one with more vocal harmonies and samples and synths. It's a personal milestone. We wanted to change the palette, to 'go long' and we were pleasantly surprised with what came out. It was like writing our first album, for the first time again."
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.
In keeping with the album's theme today's double-track release "Just In Time" / "Ahhhh (This Isn't Ideal)" follows "One Night" / "Real I'm Told" and "Dog Years" / "Queen Of Comedy." Expanding on the idea that often in life, things seem to echo a bit with uncertainty, but you've got to trudge along, "Just In Time" although cheerful in tone is "really not a very happy song," Liam shares. "It seems to me that it's about trying to muster up the hope that one day you'll make it out of the sty situation that you've found yourself in, and desperately searching for some self belief."
The second single – inspired by Stefan's favorites Nina Simone and MGMT – "Ahhhh (This Isn't Ideal)" is the first Good Morning track to really dive into reverb, leaving it extra dreamy and washed with a little bit of weariness. "Lyrically it began about my feelings surrounding being in this band at that point," Stefan explains, "and sorta moved towards a more general song about finding a state of content within your life. Sorta like I grew up wanting to make music for a living, and now that just makes me anxious and suspicious? Just like people I know who go down the path of getting married and having kids etc yet still struggle with their dependencies on drugs and alcohol - nothing's ever truly ideal, but you gotta appreciate those in between moments when you're not overwhelmed by it all."
In the lead up to Good Morning Seven's release, the band will be touring across the US in support of Waxahatchee, find all of the dates here. Good Morning have also announced a one off live in-studio performance this February in Naarm / Melbourne - the band's first Australian show in over two years and the only Australian show planned for the near future as they relocate overseas.
04/18 - Uptown Theater - Kansas City, MO
04/19 - Palace Theatre - St. Paul, MN
04/20 - Salt Shed - Chicago, IL
04/21 - Majestic Theatre - Detroit, MI
04/23 - Massey Hall - Toronto, ON
04/25 - Toad's Place - New Haven, CT
04/26 - Orpheum Theatre - Boston, MA
04/27 - Brooklyn Paramount - Brooklyn, NY
04/28 - The National - Richmond, VA
04/30 - The Orange Peel - Asheville, NC
05/01 - Ryman Auditorium - Nashville, TN
05/03 - Jannus Live - St. Petersburg, FL
05/04 - The Beacham Theater - Orlando, FL
05/06 - Lyric Theatre - Birmingham, AL
05/08 - Cain's Ballroom - Tulsa, OK
05/09 - Tannahill's Tavern & Music Hall - Fort Worth, TX
05/10 - The Heights Theater - Houston, TX
05/11 - ACL Live at the Moody Theater - Austin, TX
05/13 - The Van Buren - Phoenix, AZ
05/14 - The Observatory North Park - San Diego, CA
05/16 - Hollywood Palladium - Los Angeles, CA
05/17 - Barrellhouse Brewing Co. - Pasa Robles, CA
05/18 - Fox Theater - Oakland,CA
05/19 - Gundlach Bundschau Winery - Sonoma, CA
05/21 - The Depot - Salt Lake City, UT
05/23 - The Mission Ballroom - Denver, CO
Over the past decade, Good Morning - the Australian duo of best friends Stefan Blair and Liam Parsons - 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. T
he 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).
Photo by Pooneh Ghana
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