
Sally Anne Morgan’s rich, intimate and modern music is cultivated with the seeds sown by folk, contemporary music and psychedelia. The perfect soundtrack for the shifting seasons as we move into summer and then fall, we’re ecstatic to announce Morgan’s new album Carrying, which will be out September 22nd. Listen to first single “The Center” now at any streaming platform, and scope the gorgeous “newt red” limited-edition LP.
Carrying tills the rich soil of Appalachian traditions and Sally’s rural North Carolina surroundings into warm, reflective songs about navigating challenges, as well as the most joyous and personal emotions surrounding Morgan’s own pregnancy and birth of her first child. The album brings together a host of friends and collaborators from the psychedelic folk and “cosmic country” spheres to realize Morgan’s masterful arrangements - from Ripley Johnson (Rose City Band) and Nathan Bowles (Steve Gunn Band, Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) to guitarist Andrew Zinn and many more. A genuinely fresh and exciting expansion on folk forms, essential.
Sally Anne Morgan plays haunting psychedelic Appalachian folk drone that invokes the rhododendron thickets, creeks and mountains of her local landscape in Western North Carolina. Sally plays with the Black Twig Pickers and House and Land, both groups that have been established as dedicated practitioners of traditional music re-cast and shaped by appreciation of modern improvisation, minimalism, microtonality and drone based music from across the globe. Thriving in the in-betweenness of two worlds, Sally is among those who prove that the exploration of the outmost bounds of sound and the exploration of the ancientness rooted in traditional music aren’t as different as one might think. She weaves her fiddle and banjo playing with voice, percussion, and other drone elements to create something that spans both the ecstatic abandon and the simple spaciousness that music can have. Also a visual artist, Sally does printmaking and drawing under the name Ratbee Press.
Albums:
Carrying (Sept 2023)
Cups (Nov 2021)
Thread (Sept 2020)
Thrill Jockey page here
"Sally Anne Morgan makes old-time music for modern minds"
Grayson Haver Currin for the Mountain Xpress
"For her first solo album...Morgan stays true to her musical roots while keeping the arrangements interesting, fresh and often unusual"
Folk Radio UK
Sally Anne Morgan Invites Us Into a Metaphorical Safe Space on 'Thread'
Pop Matters
" The album plays like a kaleidoscopic vision of folk music, with each track pulling from different traditions and sounds.... the album uses its sonic diversity to set up a dialog between the past and the present."
Undrcurrents
"She’s a traditionalist, but not constrained by tradition. The songs could well enter the traditional canon, but they take flight in ways that are more progressive than they first let on. "
Raven Sings the Blues
"That Blakean blend of the earthy and the cosmic is readily apparent throughout Sally Anne Morgan’s solo debut, the excellent Thread"
Aquarium Drunkard