Upcoming Releases
Smidley, the project of St. Louis-based musician Conor Murphy, releases the new single, “Love in Every Direction,” from new album Murphy Horse, due September 25th via Royal Mountain Records. Following lead single “Capstone,” which features vocals from Grammy award-winning singer/guitarist Lucy Dacus, the track is explosive and vibrant, seeing Murphy lamenting this single-mindedness in the face of all he truly has over a composition that feels destined to create a series of massively emotional festival performances. Murphy Horse begins and largely resides at a crossroads in Murphy’s life, each song a representation of his inner conflict between his personal and professional selves. Though doubt remains a recurring obstacle for Murphy, each Smidley song brings him back home to love, as on today’s single.
In the past ten years, Conor Murphy the person and Smidley the band have come to exist beyond the mere creative overflow left unexplored in his work with Foxing, a beloved band now on an indefinite hiatus. Through Murphy’s own growth in and out of Smidley, though, art and life itself have entered into an ongoing cycle of redefinition. This redefinition isn’t a destination, but a new pathway paved by his gratitude for and security in the artist, husband, and man that he’s become. “These songs summarize a year of confusion and doubt where the only thing I was actually sure of is that I married the love of my life,” Murphy explains. “Those two ideas were the basis for every song here."
Smidley has turned a very specific corner with Murphy Horse. There’s no denial of the past and no fear of the future, just the blessing of the present. Never one to shy away from the influence that Foxing has had on his artistry and life, Murphy openly says, “the way I write songs…Smidley is either a reaction to Foxing or something I learned from it.” As Foxing hunched under the emotional ceiling they’d hit, Smidley became more and more of an outlet for Murphy and Foxing bassist Brett Torrence, now on guitar, and would soon be rounded out with bassist Mitch Renfrew and drummer Jack Middeke.
For Murphy Horse, Murphy enlisted Joe Reinhart (Dr. Dog, Joyce Manor, Beach Bunny) and Ryan Schwabe (BNYX, Algernon Cadwallader, Tobi Lou) for Murphy Horse’s mixing and mastering respectively. Outside of engineering, Smidley also includes a number of other guest musicians for appearances throughout the work, including previously mentioned Lucy Dacus (boygenius), Adam Schatz (Japanese Breakfast), and Brooks Tipton (Manchester Orchestra). The resulting album is driven by a variety of sonic influences like shoegaze, tropicalia, 80’s rock, and even the indie folk style heard on previous Smidley records.
