Kyle Morgan shares new single “Ransom The Captive Heart” from his debut solo LP on Team Love

Queens-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kyle Morgan grew up in central Pennsylvania, where he spent countless Sunday mornings amidst the broken strains and coffee breath of his church congregation. His first record, Starcrossed Losers, became the alias under which he would go on to release two more, Bind Us Anew and Strange Hesitations, each featuring his distinctive conglomeration of Americana styles, from stripped-down acoustic ballads and love-lorn parlor laments to roaring alt-country and throwback 60’s rock’n’roll.

Younger At Most Everything, coming to Team Love Records February 25, 2022, is a collection of deeply personal songs that reads like a map of Morgan’s spiritual evolution. From child of evangelical Christianity to existentially paralyzed adolescent, drunken romantic to neurotic but industrious artist, Younger takes listeners on a bumpy journey through the badlands of self-doubt, fear, repression, and near-despair, charting the ongoing, non-linear path towards healing. The second single, “Ransom The Captive Heart,” is out today.

“I wasn’t really sure what “Ransom The Captive Heart” was all about while writing it.  More
than subject matter or meaning, it was language and the sounds of words that guided me
through its composition.  I often find that without some concrete piece of reality or experience
anchoring me in the songwriting process, my mind unconsciously gravitates back to the Christian
mythology I was reared on and which I’ve spent most my adult life alternatively running from and
returning to in dizzying pendulum motions.  Listening now, I hear a song of resignation, a
reluctant recognition that the constant striving to attain redemption, salvation, enlightenment
(whatever you call it) is the very thing keeping me from the freedom I long for.” -Kyle

The album’s title, a mishearing of Gram Parson’s 1968 classic “Hickory Wind,” marks Morgan’s place in the history of American musicians who have blurred the lines between traditional and modern. The sparse, mostly acoustic arrangements, featuring fingerstyle guitar, pedal steel, pump organ, and Morgan’s earnest tenor voice, clearly reflect a deep love for classic roots music such as The Carter Family, Mississippi John Hurt, and The Louvin Brothers, while taking on the melodic inventiveness of such modern greats as Rufus Wainwright and Ron Sexsmith.

The production of Younger At Most Everything began in late February, 2020 with a whirlwind session at Welterweight Sound in the Hudson Valley of NY. Working with producer Ryan Dieringer, Morgan recorded live solo performances of over 20 songs in two days’ time, many of which would comprise the core of the album. The two used these recordings as access points to the deeper world within the songs – like a live performance at the gates of Kyle’s memory and imagination. These worlds can at times feel wistful and calm, other times stormy and defiant – like the long road to self-acceptance with its intermittent pavement and poorly timed flat tires.