She’s part folk, pop, country and rock, aka a hybrid with plenty of dashes yet to give. “I was always too pop for folk and too folk for country,” Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter Grace Morrison explains in the press release that came with this, her sixth album. “Eventually, I started peeling back the layers of my music to find out what truly made it mine. At the heart of it all was my deep, undeniable connection to the Cape Cod coastline—it’s in my blood, in my voice, in every lyric I write. My music carries the storytelling of country, the twang, but also the raw, unshakable spirit of a Swamp Yankee. That’s Saltwater Country.”
The stylistic fusion is audible throughout the sprawling Saltwater Country album, which was produced by Jon Evans (Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan). She’s a northeastern Courtney Marie Andrews one song, an incisive Iris DeMent, gritty Lucinda or lilting Lisa Loeb the next, all while possessing a Mary Chapin Carpenter-like gift for crafting catchy hooks. You find yourself lost in the rollicking title track and, too, hearing echoes of your childhood in “Poor Man’s Daughter,” about how her family’s financial hardships linger with her, still.
The sizzling “Heartbreak Hell” is funny, fiery and ferocious, all while pondering the heartaches—some self-inflicted, others not—she’s faced, from ghosting a guy who misspelled Saturday (if it was Wednesday maybe she’d have understood) to falling for a history-minded fellow who wasn’t as swell as she hoped. Either/or, she realizes the charred matches served a purpose larger than the initial flame: “I walked away a little closer to myself.”
“Beer in a Teacup” is another hook-filled delight, initially about overcoming shyness with the help of alcohol but, soon enough, digging deep to reveal that insecurities plague all but the psychopaths who walk among us: “Here’s a little secret/I ain’t gonna keep it/There’s no such thing as cool/Everybody’s messed up/Might not wanna fess up/The perfect man’s a fool.”
The 15-track album closes with the sweet “On My Way to Massachusetts,” a love song to her home state. Throughout, she applies a lesson gleaned from the success of her 2021 song “Just Loving You”: “[T]he more personal and specific my songs are, the more they seem to resonate. You’ve got to write what you know.”
There’s a “what if” quality to life that, especially as we grow older, finds us looking back and wondering what might have been. If we’d chosen—or been offered—Door No. 2 instead of 1 or 3, maybe we’d have landed that grant, gotten that promotion, and raced the fast track to riches beyond our imagination. But, if we had, would we have met that special someone? Would we actually be happy or, at least, content? Morrison eschews such questions, instead sliding the ephemera of life beneath a microscope and recording her observations in sly, wry and heartfelt ways. She muses about the paths taken, in other words, and enables us to hear aspects of ourselves in her songs.
Saltwater Country, in short, is an album well worth many listens. It’s available in physical form via Morrison’s online store, while select tracks can be purchased via Bandcamp; and, as of today (June 12), it can be streamed everywhere.
The track list:
The Old Grey Cat 