MORGXN - Heartland: Part I
MORGXN takes a country turn on his outstanding album Heartland: Part I. Bee Delores guides us through this "wallop" of a meditation on pain and belonging in rural America.
"I told myself a lie / I told myself I needed a greater height / Just one more cosmic sign / Just want to know I’m right on my path," sings indie-pop singer-songwriter MORGXN. His song "Make It Out Alive" opens his new EP, Heartland: Part I, and captures the manifesto of the project. Pulled from conversations with his husband on a farm in rural Tennessee, it serves as a reminder that queer people exist in deeply red states.
With "What Comes Next," he reorganizes his priorities, bemoaning all the time spent seeing the world and sacrificing parts of himself in the process. He turns his attention to his husband, proclaiming, "I'm done chasin' life alone." Later, he enlists powerhouse Katie Pruitt for a must-hear collaboration, "Talk About It," in which the duo discusses all the pain and hurt many queer people experience in the world. "You gotta talk about the way you hold your pain and put it off another day," they sing, their voices locking together like puzzle pieces. "You try to laugh it off and say it's nothing."
On the project, MORGXN writes on Instagram: "The heartland - as it stands - is not normally a place for people like me. It doesn’t always feel welcoming unless you’re a specific type of American. But statistically speaking, the heartland is full of all of us, whether that’s the mainstream narrative or not. We are and will always be here."
The closing song is a wallop of a performance, recorded live with only a piano. It's an unapologetically career-defining moment that drills down to letting "my walls come down now, and see what we're building between," he sings. It's far more than just a memorable song; it's one of the year's most moving.
MORGXN's Heartland: Part I makes for a transcendent experience and one that should, if there's any justice in the world, propel him further into the spotlight.
