I have written once in some incidental comment that The Morelings stand as one of the best things after Cocteau Twins. I stick to that very statement without any disrespect for the work of so many bands that I love and follow. By saying this I mean that in the actual state of the indie music scene The Morelings emerge as the perfect heirs and best interpreters of what I consider the classic shoegaze/dream pop sonic boundary, so brilliantly crafted by the above mentioned well-known trio of Glaswegian shoegazers. The Morelings are a post-punk, shoegaze dream pop duo (although they have started as trio), based in Philadelphia and formed by Kedra Caroline (bass and vocals) and Matthew William (guitars).
The band started back in the summer of 2013 when Kedra Caroline and Matthew William following previous musical common interests began working on a few song ideas. The songwriting process surely went pretty well because they’ve soon decided to move forward. In January 2014, The Morelings were ready to take their music to another level of sound maturity already with Chris Jordan in control of the drum kit. During the summer of 2014 they had the opportunity to play a set of several shows, allowing them to go through live performance and song confidence ability test as well as measure the public reception and reaction to their work. In September and October of that same year they got back again to the studio for the final recording and mixing details of what would become the immensely beautiful three song debut EP “NO SIGN” which would be officially released in January 8th 2015.
A whole year has gone by after the band began working on their debut EP recording project and the world would soon be ready for the dreamiest fifteen minutes forty-six seconds trip of ethereal vocals, dreamy guitar and tantalizing percussion of 2015... My first encounter with The Morelings left me with the feeling that they had been playing and writing songs together for ages considering the expressiveness of their work which strangely denoted quite an impressive “how-we-want-it-to-sound-like-and-where-we-want-to-go” state of mind because as an emerging band and taking into account the non-imitative way they seemed to be re-creating and setting the pathways of their sound. Above all what I have digested from this initial “Hey-we-are-The Morelings” was that all of a sudden I got struck by a time warp that drove me back and forth in loop mode to and through the 80s and back again by means of a masterfully non-visible hand of subtlety and refreshing sonic textures that I am sure to have heard before with a similar powerful spellbinding effect.
The Morelings have that mystique aura of mystery that easily gives room to another time dimension within that time road where one is supposedly travelling through and pushes us towards a nostalgic delight, some refined past perfect where the recurrent tridimensionality of past, present and future work as a phenomenological blend that make one long for a future that is yet to come, but which in fact is located in the past and all this dialectics of time balanced by a present that never really is because it flows at the speed of light. The outcome of it all is something like a rare fusion of memoirs, presence, absence and longing simultaneously entwining. A daydream gaze.
As someone permanently searching for new bands in the indie music bandwidth I have to say that I did find The Morelings by mere lucky strike while googling for shoegaze/dream pop novelties in the cyberspace. Clearly stated previously, the first strong feeling I had about them was that they sounded like Cocteau Twins circa 83. The Morelings have totally surprised me with that uncommon gift of making me literally re-vivify emotions from thirty years ago which is almost an absurdity. What an amazing experience it is when you’re suddenly floating on air in fluffy clouds of nostalgia. A priceless treasure of limitless beauty.
I remember that I stood frozen like for some moments completely stunned and chilled. What a strange feeling it was. Years after a moment in time a different band from a different place on earth has the same effect on us as The Cocteau Twins have had years before. The very same past life sensation the very same out of time experience. Am I getting lame or what?! All this got me wondering about how amazingly fantastic this was, but why would a North American band from Philadelphia sound so exquisitely to Cocteau Twins without even daring to imitate them, though perfectly sketching the very essence of timelessness ideal embedded in the work of the famed Scottish shoegazers? Considering that if we go back to the early 80s, Philadelphia and Glasgow have probably anything else in common this was a little bit weird.
When one considers that the core substance of The Cocteau Twins sonority lies between 80 and 84 which is equivalent to say between “Garlands” and “Victorialand” that makes it even harder to put in perspective the fact that three young individuals sounded to me like they were doing this for ages in 2015. For a moment I’ve even considered if The Morelings could either be a tribute band or by any astrophysical chance a parallel universe version of the Cocteau Twins without being them because as written before and this ought to be highlighted they are far from being imitators or replicators of a formula of sound.
The Morelings stand out as original and genuine. Yes, I have listened to this Philly trio dozens of times on repeat mode. I still do. Don’t get any fed up with it. There were times when I compulsively had to plunge myself into The Morelings before sleeping to get anihilated in the depths of their musical dreamland. The band builds an almost ghostly spectral sonic atmosphere resulting in some sort of solemn pagan liturgy reinforced by the fact that front woman Kedra Caroline naturally imposes herself as a cinematic character out off of French nouvelle vague movie aesthetics. She looks like 60s and 70s French singer France Gall, but her voice has the tone and homesickness of highly famed French singer Françoise Hardy which means that I can perfectly imagine Kedra Caroline starring in one of Godard, Chabrol or Rohmer films.
When one finds a band like The Morelings it is almost inevitable not to acknowledge that they’ve perfectly understood how that magnificent unstoppable wheel of layered sounds where Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Echo and The Bunnymen, The Chameleons spun their magic threads works. Why am i saying it? Well there would be no shoegaze or dreampop without The Banshees. They are quintessential to The Cocteau Twins early sound matrix. Apart from what I’ve just said The Morelings poiesis or artistic process does not seem to be solely rooted in the late 80s post punk shoegaze and dream pop. Quite the opposite. The band seem to be pretty well identified with the first half of the 80s decade, but surprise, surprise, surprise they also to be in tune with mid 70s dreamy existential folk gaze.
It may sound astonishingly absurd, but when listening to the Philly based trio work, it comes to mind the likes of sublime Sandy Denny “Who Knows Where The Time Goes”, Richard and Linda Thompson “I want to see the Bright Lights Tonight” creative period, the great Nick Drake “Things Behind The Sun” or “Northern Sky” not to mention the omnipresence of Bert Jansch and bits of early baroque John Renbourn in the layers of sound, waving out from Matthew William guitar playing, in spite of Kedra Caroline vocal arrangements actually giving quite some help to sustain this so called relatively diffused folk influence not to mention the percussion embellishments also so present in the mid 70s existential folk.
As stated a few lines above, I went chasing for other potentially significant influences that could be spotted in The Morelings work considering that i have listened not only to their EP but to all of their available material and songs being two of them covers. One is from New Order’s “Lonesome Tonight” and the other one a cover of “Stars in Your Eyes” from a coup de coeur of mine the marvellous bass player Kendra Smith (wherever she is) a founding member of Dream Syndicate and Opal. When one listens to a wider range of songs by The Morelings that allows us to conclude that, for instance, there is no audible contribution from Lush like some seem to believe as well as there is none from Slowdive either.
If I am permitted to say it there is no escape for the Philadelphia trio from the Cocteau Twins tetrahedral construction which includes “Garlands”, “Head Over Heels”, “Treasure” and “Victorialand”. They are immersed and soaked into that universe without regret. Anyway, there seems to be some other visible influence coming from the likes of The Chameleons “Script of The Bridge” seminal album. All of this carefully seasoned with Paisley Underground reminiscences.
This consideration may seem abusive at first, but when one listens to The Morelings EP under a Cocteau Twins radar all doubts vanish. If we apply the same procedure to songs such as “Before” and “I Swear” we can easily listen The Chameleons more than resonating in the background, though it really is The Cocteau Twins atmosphere that reigns like an elegant foam cloud all through The Morelings eight song set.´In fact, when one picks the magnificent EP “NO SIGN”, a rare case of aesthetic coherence and cohesiveness which stands by its own merit as one of the highest EP moments of 2015.
The melodic nature, intrinsic to the three songs of the EP fully affirm the density of post punk legacy in a dream pop, shoegaze framework something that isn’t surprising at all because “NO SIGN” tunes itself mostly in the obscure anxiety presented in "Garlands" and "Head Over Heels" dragging within the very essentials of post punk like for instance the steady hypnotic elaborate bass lines, the exploding guitar choruses with shimmering clean delays or glassy diffused tones, the tribal drumming upgraded with rhythmic patterns which help the vocals to rise to the borderline of undisclosed open spaces flirting with nostalgic ambient. The Morelings are as far as we know, actively working on their first and long awaited full-length and we estimate that it would be one of the most ethereally beautiful moments of 2016 .