Yucatan Records

Murphykid - Skeletons

Murphykid is the work of Al Murphy and his debut album Skeletons comes from the age-old and universal seed of all good music - heartache. Conveying the sense of longing and bittersweet reflection found in Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago with a touch of the wistful folk of Iron & Wine, the music of Murphykid is one of softly strummed acoustic guitar and heartbreakingly vulnerable lyrics, sung with Murphy’s distinctive soft lilt.

Whilst the art of troubadours pouring their misery onto music might not be new, the release of Skeletons is somewhat more unconventional. For Skeletons was written 14 years ago back in 2004 after a break-up prompted Murphy to flee London and return to his Yorkshire homeland. Taking refuge in his sister’s garden shed Murphy, alongside a second-hand eight-track reel-to-reel from eBay, poured his pain into what he refers to as his “miserablist folk masterpiece.”

At this time there was a flurry of interest from record labels but Murphy’s destiny took him around the world, first Berlin, then New York, as an artist of the visual, not the musical kind. However, such is the idiosyncratic nature of life, in 2016 Murphy received a call out the blue from a management company who had stumbled across the 2004 demo. Taken with its immediacy and rawness they persuaded Murphy to finally release it to the world.

After some searching for the original reel-to-reel tapes behind the Christmas decorations in his sister’s loft, followed by a few additional re-recording sessions at Kensaltown Studios, London, Skeletons is finally ready to see the light of day.

Testament to the album’s classic, timeless feel, Skeletons is as sweet, sad and soul-searching now as it as all those years ago. From the wistful-yet-rousing ’Another Bluebird’ to the delicately bittersweet ‘Wolf’, the songs capture an emotional outpouring of the purest kind. All subtly laced with Murphy’s irrepressibly dry and quintessentially British sense of humour, which has led The Line of Best Fit to describe his work as “A heart-warming ode to Northern self-deprecating humour.”

Skeleton shows an artist in that perfect moment of unobserved reflection, like Elliott Smith writing Roman Candle, or Nick Drake writing Five Leaves Left, when they say what they want to say, not what they think anyone else wants to hear.

It seems that happy endings do exist. However, the moral that Murphy offers is less Hollywood, more Yorkshire: “Get your heart broken more."