Gurf Morlix – Diamonds To Dust

The words roll out in Gurf Morlix’s old soul voice as if from a seer delivering eternal knowledge, a medicine man calling up the Great Spirit or a miracle cure: “Birth to boneyard, boom to bust/Everything falls apart like it must.”

On his fourth solo album, Morlix’s themes are living and dying, transience and permanence, the ephemeral and the lasting, and from the opening death penalty dirge “Killing Time In Texas” to the final heartbreaking duet with Patty Griffin, “Need You Now”, it all exhibits timeless wisdom and unlimited compassion. No matter the tempo — and Morlix is a Zen master of tempo — each lyric squeezes out rivers of emotion that have that hollow pit in the stomach dialed in.

With songs addressing everything from Hurricane Katrina to murdered atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Morlix somehow manages to make a timeless record that seems perfect for this historical moment — never more so than when he intones Dylan’s mythic line, “You don’t count your dead when God’s on your side”. He takes it deep with “Windows Open, Windows Close” as he eulogizes Warren Zevon, Blaze Foley, and a Grateful Dead roadie: “Pour his ashes in a road case/On tour forevermore.” Like the great gospel artists, when he sings about death, Morlix glorifies life.