GOOD MORNING RETURN WITH TWO-TRACK ‘MOLLYDUKER / KEEP IT’ + ANNOUNCE VICTORIAN TOUR THIS JUNE + SIGN TO POLYVINYL RECORDS
PRAISE FOR MOLLYDUKER / KEEP IT
“Everything’s looking good for Melbourne duo Good Morning...”
Billboard
“’Mollyduker' / 'Keep It' are chill and organic indie rock, but there are some slight stylistic differences due to each member taking lead vocals on some Lennon-McCartney shit... 'Mollyduker' is an easygoing glide somewhere between Woods and the War On Drugs... 'Keep It' is a bit more jangly and acoustic — kind of like if his namesake Gram Parsons found inspiration while feeling extremely drowsy."
Stereogum
Australian duo Good Morning return today with first new music in two years with double release ‘Mollyduker / Keep It’ and announce their Victorian tour dates this June.
The pastoral, rangy ‘Mollyduker’, sung by Stefan, is a quintessential driving song, its steady, wiry groove hardly letting up over the course of its runtime. The song’s ease belies its tense imagery: drunken spews, held tongues, and anxiety tokens abound. Stefan says: "‘Mollyduker’ was something my Pa called me whenever we’d be hanging out and working on his farm. It’s a reference to me being left-handed, however, I used to take it as somewhat of a dig. The lyrics are a reflection on my relationship with him, as well as the farm itself, which has served as a home to a lot of my family over the years.”
‘Keep It’, sung by Liam, is no less inviting and no less heavy with psychic weight. A meditation on failure, drinking, and aging, 'Keep It' is laden with piano and warm, warping guitar — soft-edged counterweights to the severed heads and flooding waters of the song’s lyrics. “Keep It is an ode to stasis,” Liam says. “Repressed feelings, substance misadventure and arrested development in your late 20s.”
Good Morning’s past run of two-track singles — 2019’s Take It Easy For Me, Stranger/Boy, I’m Just A Loser For Your Love; 2016’s Step Aside/Oppsie, and 2015’s On The Street/You and A Vessel/Radiovoice — are among the band’s most beloved songs, and ‘Mollyduker / Keep It’ are sure to join their ranks. Rich and warmly-hued, these songs reflect the Good Morning of 2021: a little more thoughtful, a little more virtuosic, and in no way any less anxious. These songs, written collaboratively, speak to the conditions under which they were made - first written in the two-week quarantine period after the band came home from their COVID-cancelled American tour, and finished as the first products of the new studio.
The news comes with the announcement of the pairs signing to Polyvinyl Records (USA/ROW) joining their eclectic roster including the likes of Alvvays, Kero Kero Bonito, STRFKR, Julia Jacklin, and more. The two-track will also be coming out on the band’s own imprint, Good Morning Music Company Worldwide via Virgin Music Australia. Of the signing, Polyvinyl Label Director, Seth Hubbard shares, "I’ve been a fan of the band for years, but when I heard their newest collection of songs I was blown away. We are so excited for Polyvinyl to help share this music with the world." The band reflect, "We’re excited to start working with Polyvinyl, a label we’ve admired for a while now. Here’s to a long and beautiful journey together!"
They say it’s hard to keep a creative partnership going after a while. Not so in the case of Good Morning - in their seventh year of making music together, the Melbourne duo made up of Stefan Blair and Liam Parsons have only just now stepped into that most fruitful of creative endeavours: commercial real estate. They’re not landlords just yet: in fact, the early months of 2021 have seen Stefan and Liam sign the lease on a modest, appropriately scrappy recording studio in Melbourne’s inner north. The natural next step for two musicians who have always preferred to do things entirely themselves - the band first formed after Stefan and Liam split the cost of a Foxtex 4-track tape machine - Good Morning’s new recording space is already yielding dividends: today, they release 'Mollyduker/Keep It', a new double-A-side single and their first new music since 2019’s Basketball Breakups. A full-length for Polyvinyl will be released later in 2021, with details to come.
'Mollyduker/Keep It' is out now via Polyvinyl Records / Virgin Music Australia,
buy/stream it here.
SOME SHOWS IN VICTORIA TOUR DATES
Fri 11 Jun – The Curtin Bandroom - Melbourne (6:15pm & 9:15pm + Full Band) TIX HERE
Sat 12 Jun - Bridge - Castlemaine (Full Band) TIX HERE
Sat 19 June - Major Tom’s - Kyneton (Duo) TIX HERE
Fri 25 June - The Eastern - Ballarat (Full Band) TIX HERE
Sat 26 June - Tanswells - Beechworth (Full Band) TIX HERE
