ALBUM REVIEW: On ‘Humble Quest,’ Maren Morris Finds Meaning in the Search

Though one could assume with an album title like Humble Quest that Maren Morris has reached some end of a mythic journey, her third album doesn’t burden itself with having all the answers. It is made up of the work Morris has done, and continues to do, to carve out space for herself in the crowded Nashville pool and, as she sang in her 2020 single, leave it better than she found it. The start of the pandemic found her at odds, celebrating the success of her last tour and album, learning to be a mother for the first time, and grieving the loss of a close friend and collaborator. All these feelings, however messy, went into the hook-filled songs on Humble Quest, and the result is something like enlightenment.

The lead single off Humble Quest, “Circles Around This Town,” chronicles the ups and downs of Morris’ rise to the top. “Trying to sing something with meaning / Something worth singing about,” she belts. There is an elegant power to her voice and Morris wields it thoughtfully and nimbly, especially on the deeply personal album closer “What Would This World Do?”, a tribute to her hitmaking collaborator Michael Busbee, who died in 2019 soon after a brain cancer diagnosis. “Hummingbird,” coincidentally written on the day Morris found out she was pregnant with her son, opens with his gentle coo of “mama” before Morris dives into the most beautiful analogies of motherhood. And the album’s title track — its crown jewel — is a shiny pop anthem embracing the imperfections, the still unknown, the stumbles, and everything in between. Morris’ voice blasts off like dynamite as she sings, “Not gonna hold my breath / Cause I still haven’t found it yet.”

Amid all the soulful exploration, Morris can turn a phrase with a sly wink like the best of them. “Tall Guys,” a cheeky ode to her husband and a co-write with her Highwomen bandmate Natalie Hemby, is equal parts humor and sweetness. As are the swooning love songs “Detour” and “Background Music,” two of Humble Quest’s brightest moments. On the latter, she finds the romance in the morbid idea of musicians fading away into obscurity: “Baby, all we’ll ever be to them in a hundred years / Is three minutes in a car, in a bar / That says ‘we were here.’”

It’s hard to imagine Morris’ light being dimmed as it feels like, in some ways, she’s just getting started. But if it’s as inevitable as she imagines, at least she can shrug and laugh it off. And maybe that’s the most profound, most humbling conclusion to reach at the end of a quest.