This is a Photograph–Kevin Morby (Dead Oceans, 2022)

Kevin Morby’s seventh album meditates on the fleeting nature of life and love but avoids melancholy by crisp specifics that remind us of what makes it all worthwhile. By now it’s safe to say that Morby is one of our best singer-songwriters. He won’t be to everyone’s taste–his vocals tend a little toward the chant rather than the melodic and his sincerity might shade into the precious–but he’s one of the best lyricists out there. Title track “This is a Photograph” uses a snapshot of his dad to capture the fact that all potential is ultimately buried by time but that it’s the moments, “My body…my girls…my boy…the sun” that are worth living for. This is an album that helps us reconcile ourselves to the convoluted topography the pandemic has imposed on our sense of the flow of our lives.