Australian duo Good Morning are back today with the announcement of their new album, Barnyard, which will be released on October 22nd, 2021 on their new label home Polyvinyl Record Co.Good Morning are Liam Parsons and Stefan Blair and the album was recorded pre-pandemic at Wilco’s famed studio The Loft. Barnyard shows a band, who have already achieved a cult status in their homeland and here in the US, ready to make their mark in 2021. 

Along with the news of a new album they are also dropping a new song and a video to their first album single “Country,” written and sung by Liam, “Country” persists in spite of its appeal to return to a simpler, easier way of being.

Disclaimer: no chickens were harmed in the making of this video.

The pensive refrain on “Country” sees Liam reflecting on his younger desires, wants and needs, and how they panned out into adulthood. He explains, “I’m still not sure if I’m singing to old friends, an old lover or my old self. I think probably all three. At the time, I was having a rough one reconciling my life with what I had expected adult life to be. I knew that my younger self – a more virtuous, kind-hearted and patient person – would be perplexed by how I had turned out, and I felt a kind of second-hand embarrassment for myself looking over the last few years of false starts and dead ends. This song is an attempt from me to reconnect with my younger self as well as some key ghosts from my past and to move forward by looking back – pretty futile stuff really.”

Visually, “Country” is brought to life against a recurring backdrop of Liam’s childhood, the 1st Eltham Scouts Hall. “I was always too embarrassed to admit that I was a scout to my school friends, the same way I was too embarrassed to admit that I got piano lessons. Both of those things are ridiculous. Scouts is cool and so are piano lessons” he shares. 

Good Morning are rulebreakers. Not in a sexy, flamboyant way – more in a casual, resigned kind of way. Accidental and incidental rulebreakers. The creation and release of their sixth album, Barnyard, is the result of a process of patient refinement and the breaking of a couple of self-imposed rules. Thoughtful, catchy, idiosyncratic, and nearly twice the average length of their back catalogue, it’s all the things one might love about Good Morning, this time around presented with the fat trimmed and the edges sharpened. 

Photo Courtesy: Nick Mckk