Major Murphy

Major Murphy explores the beauty of destruction and renewal on their latest release, Fallout. The 8-song project follows the band’s 2021 shimmering indie rock opus, Access, which garnered praise from The FADER, Stereogum, Uncut Magazine, The Sunday Times and more for its “timeless, universal feel” and the band’s ability to “combine the looseness of 1990s indie with the precision of 1970s soft rock.” On Fallout, Major Murphy extrapolates on many of the ideas and creative practices they established during the making of Access–distilling their sonic sketches with the stirring emotional terrain around parenthood, creative life and empathy.

Over the course of its eight tracks, Fallout deals in both abstraction and familiarity, weaving in classic rock and vintage sounds with the band’s unique alchemy of indie rock, which deftly pulls elements of soft rock, singer-songwriter and psychedelic sensibilities into cohesion. Songwriter Jacob Bullard shared that “This is our most modern collection of songs,” noting the natural progression of their songwriting towards a more alternative and contemporary lens. The project’s artwork also touches on this shift, filtering the classic Americana quilt motif into a looser abstraction, painted by friend Blake Rhein of the band Durand Jones and the Indications.

The band, made up of songwriter Jacob Bullard, bassist Jacki Warren, who did a stint as bassist for Waxahatchee, and Chad Houseman, who also performs as Tom Hymn, embraced live studio performances to capture a sense of rawness on their newest project. Fallout is the first Major Murphy record to include strings, which, played by Jeffrey Neimeier, add a sense of poignant urgency to many of the tracks. Fallout feels in many ways experimental and like a unique product of our time, highlighted by the psychedelic sonic collages that constitute both the title track and “The Water,” the ode to creative immediacy of “First Thought (Best Thought)” and the punchy, indie rock verve of single “Time Out.”

A collaborative meditation on life, love and time, Fallout arrives as a true amalgamation of Major Murphy’s prior works. There are their classic rock riffs and hard-hitting drums, but also gentle harmonies and soft strings, all working to push the envelope of the band’s ever-evolving sound while crafting highly potent tracks that are both easeful and stirring. Fallout is a perfect snapshot of a band working to balance levity, artistry and community in a turbulent time.