A Tale of Two Murphys

Italian trio, Father Murphy, possibly named after the American NBC show of the same name, have released …And He Told Us to Turn to the Sun on Aagoo Records in the US. However, the LP and CD were previously made available late last year by both Boring Machines (Italy) and No-Fi Recordings (Italy).

I think overall, they are sort of too atmospheric for me, but if you
are into experimental and creepy music with anything from synth to bird
sounds to organic percussion, then you should check out Father Murphy.
In some way, I think if you already like slow tempos of doom metal,
you’ll welcome Father Murphy into your home/crypt.

Where I think the band succeed is when they’re able to just
let their music run with it, I’m talking about the epic “At That Time I
Guess We Misunderstood” and “In Their Graves” – which I think are
actually just one song, but with four distinctive mini-songs within the
larger work (if you discount the “hidden track” as a separate song).
There’s light bulbs being shattered, there’s actually some melodies,
and some of the best vocals from “the Reverend” Freddie Murphy and the
rarely heard Chiara Lee.

It should be interesting to see this band live, I’m assuming
they like to improvise and also have a sense of the theatrics. I mean,
who wouldn’t want to dress up in some sort of blood-soaked Church
clothes?

If their sound is DIY, then so are the records. Most of these releases for …And He Told Us to Turn to the Sun are hand-made. Old-skool cassette tapes are available in 100 copies on either red or black tapes from Portland’s UHU Records, while the deluxe CD version from Aagoo Records
is limited to 500 copies. If you don’t like the physical world
(why???), then there’s always digital versions of the record at Amazon MP3 Store (which is not made available for download until this Thursday, August 6^th.)

Bonus: Free download of Father Murphy’s version of “There is a War” from Stranger Music: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen…. which will leave you to wonder, “Are you sure this is Leonard Cohen?“.

Jessie Murphy In The Woods, or sometime JMITW, are a three lovely New York women (Jessie Murphy, Amy Stratton, Marcia Webb), whose motto is “We don’t sing in unison. We sing in unicorn.”
Since the band’s team leader is Jessie Murphy, I should point out that
she previously released two albums and was briefly part of a duo with
guitarist/singer Jamie Stellini in the-extremely-hard-to-google-name, The Love.

Reading their biography, it would seem they actually have an album called Eight Belles, released on Rex Records,
however, I was sure hard-pressed to find any additional information
about it. The five-track review copy I receive is simply self-titled,
actually it doesn’t even have a cover artwork (which as you know I’m
very keen on good album artwork).

I can see why they’d title their forth-coming (?) album Eight Belles,
this is one of the stand-out tracks for me. The song plays like a
metaphor human relationship between girl (Eight Belles) and boy (Big
Brown) in a song about a horse race. Murphy seems to have a thing for human-as-horses, as heard on
another of their song, “When I Am A Horse Again”.

Their tribute song to Owen Wilson is cute. You certainly know what to expect when you hear “God save Owen Wilson, he’s a lot like me!“. The writer-slash-actor whose work with Wes Anderson brought us the quadrilogy of Bottle Rockets, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and, my least favorite, The Darjeeling Limited.
However, “Owen Wilson” isn’t as strong as “In The Woods”, in my opinion…
as this song employs woodsy bird recording, hand-claps, and that
unison/unicorn harmony that I mentioned earlier.

No idea where you can pick up Eight Belles, but I’m sure if you ask them directly, they’d be more than happy to send you any information. In the meantime, you can get anti-folky music from Jessie Murphy’s previous albums.