Truth In Song

"It wasn't doing it intentionally to combat anything,” singer-songwriter John Murry says about the unglamorous view of life as a junkie he presents on his debut, The Graceless Age – after all, he was clinically dead for several minutes after one overdose, an incident he sings about in, Little Coloured Balloons, a track opened by the voice of his mother talking about picking him up at the hospital afterwards.

“As I've toured I've realised more and more that my theory that indie rock is nothing more than glorified disco, and that there should have been punk rock, or at least the aesthetic, the ideal, that should have kicked in a long time ago, and it should be in the voices of those capable of telling the truth.

“But that's the thing about the record that I like too – because it was so unintentional, it is raw and unadorned, even though it's incredibly layered. The layers are just there to promote the emotion. It is what it is, and it's me, so I think that allows people to connect to something that's far bigger than me or them, and that's what doesn't exist in rock'n'roll anymore. Unless you're listenin' to Dylan records, and that's what I do… Or Jerry Jeff Walker, or whatever.”

And when Murry, born and raised in Tupelo, Mississippi, says the album was “unintentional”, he means it. The wider world got to know him through his 2006 collaboration with cult Memphis folk singer Bob Frank on the latter's album of murder ballad duets, World Without End, but when he began recording what became The Graceless Age, there were barely any songs, let alone any thought that these songs would see release and international touring as a consequence. It's certainly not an album imbued with 'heroin chic'.

“I needed to make a record to remain sane,” he confesses. “And I was really all that terribly sane. There were two songs that I'd sort of created, in a sense, years before, the basic structure or the idea, but the majority of them were literally written in the studio. These songs, they never were mine – I don't know where songs come from. I don't know what they are or [what] my intent was, but I do know when it's coming you can feel when it's honest.

“This world is going to hell in a hand-basket – we all ought to be cryin'. I guess I mean that metaphorically and literally. I think all of our lives are hellish in ways we're afraid to tell other people, and if this record is a way for other people to not be afraid, then so be it.”