The Nashville songwriter returns with a comfortable set of country-pop, colored by grief and new motherhood. It feels matter-of-factly masterful.
The Linda Ronstadt-in-Laurel Canyon vibe of Humble Quest might not be what you’d expected from Maren Morris at this point—though given her aerial-ballet career arc, it was hard to know what to expect. She broke out in 2016 with a secular gospel gem (“My Church”), landed a megahit with DJ/producer Zedd (“The Middle”), then joined the Highwomen, a supergroup tribute to, and rewrite of, 1970s outlaw country. Her latest record was made during the postpartum depression that followed the birth of her first child, a darkness compounded by the loss of her longtime creative wingman Michael Busbee to brain cancer and magnified by the pandemic. Yet the music on her third album is largely joyous and bright, both playful and profound, full of easy, comfortable pleasures that feel deeper for being hard-won.
To say Humble Quest is a re-embrace of country is misleading insofar as it suggests Morris, who can conjure a Texan Amy Winehouse, was ever a neat fit for the genre, or that she ever aspired to be. That said, the album is a near-perfect expression of country-pop post-Golden Hour, the high-water mark by Morris’ Lone Star pal Kacey Musgraves: music channeling the ’70s California rock that channeled classic country songcraft. Humble Quest may be filigreed with pedal steel, dobro, and mandolin, but it runs on guitars, synth washes, big drums, and bigger choruses. It’s all shaped with the help of Greg Kurstin, a master of pop-rock-soul triangulation who produced Morris’ hit “The Bones” along with projects by Adele, Sia, and Beck (whose Sea Change and Morning Phase might prove West Coast touchstones as significant for a new generation of country acts as the Eagles’ Greatest Hits has been for the past one).
Foundationally, this is Morris’ first LP without polymath producer Busbee—co-writer of her signatures “My Church” and “80s Mercedes”—who died of glioblastoma in 2019 at age 43. His absence, and his knack for supersizing country rock for the 21st century, shadow the album, starting with the lead track and first single “Circles Around This Town,” a triumphant autobiographical plaint about life as an aspiring Nashville songwriter. Referencing those early hits and echoing their car conceits, it focuses on the struggle to arrive: It’s got “a Montero with the AC busted,” a couple of “bad demos on a burned CD,” slammed doors, and the “couple hundred songs” she had to exorcize to land her breakthroughs, which she invokes just as the music drops out and the chorus surges. Busbee’s absence caps the album, too: The modest, aching piano ballad “What Would This World Do,” penned by Morris after his diagnosis but before his death, asks what the world would do without him. She’s living the answer daily, playing his piano in her basement.
If darkness colors the set, so does motherhood’s rapture. The day she discovered she was pregnant, Morris wrote “Hummingbird” with help from songwriting doulas the Love Junkies: Liz Rose, Hillary Lindsay, and Lori McKenna, mothers all. The acoustic waltz isn’t the best song in the A-list trio’s catalog, but it shows how Morris’ voice can alchemize a workaday lyric, with a sorghum flow rooted as deeply in R&B as the Patsy Cline countrypolitan she grew up karaoke-ing (check her read of “All Night” by fellow Texan, Beyoncé). Gospel and soul mannerisms are a dime a dozen among mainstream country singers, but few have Morris’ nuance and fluency; she already seems like one of the most influential stylists in modern country.
Humble Quest is abetted by Morris’ partner, singer-songwriter Ryan Hurd, who had a Hot 100 hit with last year’s “Chasing After You,” the pair’s first proper duet. Performing it adorably on the AMAs—locking eyes, getting handsy—they became country’s new first couple. Their creative bond seems strong: Besides contributing background vocals, Hurd co-wrote “Circles Around This Town” and “I Can’t Love You Anymore,” on which Morris devotedly rhymes “You like me even when I’ve been a bitch” with “You’re so good lookin’ it kinda makes me sick.” At 6’3” to her 5’1,” Hurd also seems an obvious inspiration for “Tall Guys,” a paean of punchlines by Morris, fellow Highwoman Natalie Hemby, and up-and-coming songsmith Aaron Raitiere.
The all-star co-writing roster seems key to Humble Quest’s hybrid potency. At times, it plays like a concept record about Nashville craft as much as a straight memoir, suggesting these elements cannot be separated in Morris’ world. The lead-off chorus pivots on Morris “trying to write circles around this town,” and the album demonstrates the most recent results. As the line between country and pop gets ever blurrier, Morris’ work with writers beyond the Music Row ecosystem is the most illuminating. Kurstin, who has never before produced a country album, co-wrote four songs, among them “Detour,” a folksy tribute to folks who travel roads less traveled that also credits Australian Sarah Aarons, co-writer of “The Middle” and songs by Khalid and Halsey. Julia Michaels, another writer on “Circles Around This Town,” has shaped megahits for Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber.
Even at a concise 37 minutes, there is filler: “Good Friends” and “Nervous” don’t get past their basic thematic verities, although Morris’ delivery elevates both, the former with warmly tipsy flow, the latter with a soulful rock holler recalling Janis Joplin. Humble Quest notably sidesteps issue-conscious songs like “Dear Hate,” Morris’ poignant response to the 2017 Las Vegas country music festival mass shooting, or “Better Than We Found It” (“America, America/God save us all/From ourselves and the Hell/That we’ve built for our kids”). Her evolving relationship to public activism seems evident in the title track, a country-pop “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” that seems to interrogate her own attempts at allyship, which she aspires to make “more pro-active and less reactive,” as she recently told The New York Times. The impulse is admirable: The music world, like the wider one, needs more folks putting the money where their social media mouths are. And in the end, Humble Quest lives up to its name: 11 lithe songs about love, work, and family, some great, some good, with a coherence and clarity that make it feel matter-of-factly masterful.
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