Multi-instrumentalist Sally Anne Morgan announces the warm, reflective new album Carrying, out Sep. 22nd, 2023. Along with the album’s announcement, Sally Anne Morgan is sharing the album’s spiritual centerpiece and first single “The Center.” “The Center” showcases Morgan’s more lush, elaborate arrangements and adept use of guests with flutist Lou Turner’s trilling flutters and dancing melodies skittering atop the thicket of her rhythm section.
Sally Anne Morgan’s rich, intimate and modern music is cultivated with the seeds sown by folk, contemporary music and psychedelia. Her work exists in conversation with the living tradition of reinterpreting folk practices, from her music to her letterpress artwork to her microbrewery Leveller Brewing Co. Alongside new interpretations of traditional songs, Morgan also composes her own pieces drawing on her a vast knowledge of folk forms, and experience with her work as part of The Black Twig Pickers and House and Land (with Sarah Louise). Her music is traditional in the sense that she continues the practice of folk songs’ rich history in social and emotional narratives yet remains completely unbound by traditional song structures and forms. Infused with her singular perspective, Morgan’s music is elevated by her deft musical skills and her remarkably expressive voice that together create wholly new folk forms, familiar in their instrumentation yet distinctly her own. Carrying tills the rich soil of Appalachian traditions and Sally’s rural North Carolina surroundings into warm, reflective songs about navigating challenges, as well as the most joyous and personal emotions surrounding Morgan’s own pregnancy and recent birth of her first child. “The process of creating this album was intimately connected to the process of conceiving and birthing and raising a child,” says Morgan.
Bridging the more freeform, expansive songs of 2021’s Cups and the lucid beauty of her acclaimed 2020 debut Thread, Carrying finds Morgan masterfully crafting songs elevated by subtle and intricate arrangements. Morgan is joined by some of the most thoughtful players in the psychedelic folk and “cosmic country” spheres, including the foundational rhythm section of drummer Nathan Bowles (Steve Gunn Band, Pelt, Black Twig Pickers), guitarist Andrew Zinn, and bassist/engineer Joe Dejarnette. The group also features guitarist Ripley Johnson (Rose City Band, Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo) contributing to Morgan’s arrangement of the Jack Elliott classic “Diamond Joe.”
