Related Articles
Kevin Morby offered audiences a taste of his latest album with a high-octane performance of “This Is a Photograph” on Wednesday’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
Backed by a full band and a trio of backup singers, Morby emphasizes the track’s slow-burning dynamics, skillfully layering different sonic elements — a jaunty guitar riff, the gentle shake of a maraca, an unobtrusive bass line — until the performance explodes into a frenetic, urgent crescendo. “This is what I’ll miss after I die,” he exclaims during a chant-like refrain. “And this is what I’ll miss about being alive.”
“This Is a Photograph” served as the lead single from Morby’s eponymous record — which Rolling Stonecalled “an album of emotional ephemera set to song, culled from lives lived and lives imagined” — released last month. The song was followed by the punk-tinged “Rock Bottom” and the emotionally vulnerable “A Random Act of Kindness.”
While on Kimmel, the singer-songwriter also recorded a web-exclusive performance of “Beautiful Strangers,” his 2016 standalone single benefitting the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for gun control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYdQ1M0E7p4
Morby is currently on an expansive world tour in support ofThis Is a Photograph, which takes the Kansas native throughout Europe and the U.K. before embarking on a North American leg in the fall. That tour kicks off Sept. 28 in Sonoma, California before wrapping Nov. 12 in Vancouver.
