Songwriter
Kevin Morby
's 2020 album
Sundowner
was a sustained expression of distinctively American malaise, evoking scenes of small, dusty towns, gravel roads, and twilight skies over Midwestern fields with barebones songs steeped in the influence of early-'80s-era
Dylan
,
Springsteen
Lou Reed
, and other rock pathfinders. The album grew out of four-track cassette demos
Morby
recorded in a shed on his property and later expanded into higher-fidelity renderings in a proper studio.
A Night at the Little Los Angeles
shares those much scrappier and unfinished-feeling four-track demos, offering an intimate window into
's songwriting process. Playing these demos side by side with their studio counterparts really brings out the hazy, almost improvisational atmosphere that carries
. The drums sound muted and distant on "Campfire," and where the studio version has a segment of field recorded campfire sounds, the demo simply leaves a space, as if to hold a place for an idea to fully materialize later. "Wander," a moody rocker on
appears here with several seconds of layered guitar noodling before the song begins. There's a real sense that
was finding his way with these songs as he went, trying ideas on and discarding the ones that didn't suit him. Hissy versions of "Valley" and the piano instrumental "Velvet Highway" offer striking counterpoint to their far more refined album versions, crackling with tension and raw immediacy in a way the studio versions lack. The lo-fi aesthetic won't fit all listeners' tastes, and some of the quirkier elements of four-track recording (tape distortion, tracks dropping out unexpectedly, uneven mixes) will sound to some ears more like mistakes than charming idiosyncrasies. Those able to tune in to the rough-hewn warmth of
are offered a more free-flowing and creatively lucid vision of these songs. The moments of uncertainty and incompleteness that sometimes surface only get closer to the unvarnished core of what
was aiming for with these songs: a state of emotional suspension that's not quite the end of the day, but not nightfall just yet. ~ Fred Thomas