David John Morris - Monastic Love Songs (2021)

Every so often an album will resonate with you from the very first line or chord. The secret to why that is, is not always so easily understood. It can happen with anything. A couple of years ago I became a little obsessed with Armelle Brusq’s documentary Leonard Cohen: Spring 96, shot during the third year of the songwriter’s five-year retreat at the Mount Baldy Zen Centre. Caught between the office, studio and monastery, the film drops in on Jikan (Cohen then ordained under his Dharma name, meaning Silent One) and finds him meditating, washing dishes, taking calls, rifling through the fridge uncovering only old pickles; the general day-to-day.

So often dogged by the media’s preconceived notions of him though, there’s something different about Spring 96. Talking openly about sitting with the unbearable disorder of life, “in the very bonfire of that distress (until) you’re burnt away and it’s ashes,” Cohen expresses how to him, poetry and song are the clarified, “beautiful fine point ash” of experience. Playful, profound and yet also viewed in the light of the allegations that would later come out against his teacher Sasaki Roshi, it’s as if we’re witnessing his lifelong focus of self-enquiry manifest onscreen.

Bringing us to David John Morris’ solo debut Monastic Love Songs. Known for fronting the boundary-pushing folk-rock band Red River Dialect, Morris’ lyrics are ‘a blurring of outer and inner landscapes’. The constitution of his inner country, as Cohen would say, vividly evoking his natural surroundings. They’ve always flowed from a deeply spiritual place, but never have they sounded quite like this. With those quivering introductory lines, the record opens, and over the course of its ten songs, ‘like a lily to the heat’, it continues to open further still.

After the sessions for Abundance Welcoming Ghosts, in October 2018 Morris made the decision to leave for Nova Scotia to spend nine months at Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist monastery in the lineage of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Unsure if he would ever write songs again, he took ordination as a monk and vowed to live according to the precepts, which included not playing instruments. In May 2019 for an hour a day, Thaye Chosang (Morris’ Buddhist name) was granted access to a guitar christened Malibu Barbie (not a Buddhist name I believe). By June he had an album. On one fateful day in mid-July, joined by musical heroes Thierry Amar & Thor Harris, having never played together they tracked the record in a 10-hour session at Hotel2Tango.

Amar & Harris are probably best known for respectively providing the pummelling force behind legendary experimental rock bands, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Swans. However, they’ve also guested on some of the finest singer/songwriter records of the early 21st century. Recalling their work with Bill Callahan, Devandra Banhart and Vic Chesnutt, on Monastic Love Song their playing matches the inquisitive tone, complimenting Morris’ Kōan-like verse. Their accompaniment is subtle and spirited, with Harris’ textural additions of brushed kit, tuned percussion and harmonium, and Amar’s lyrical, improvisatory double bass lifting these songs, allowing the narratives breathing room.

Traditional Rosemary Lane (popularised by Carthy, Briggs and Yorkston) flickers into life, the rousing acoustic/bass interplay only topped by the soulful skitter of Inner Smile, which closes the albumin glorious style. Flurried notes enfold Morris as he chants “Thank you, Hollis,” in gratitude to his Tai Chi teacher, as he celebrates the impossibility of being, dancing with one hand waving free. Elsewhere, the trio deftly move between the choppy dynamics of the brooding Skelton Key, Morris confronting the Tibetan concept of the ‘Bardo of Becoming’.

However, it’s New Safe, the lead single and album opener, that initially sparked my interest and best represents what this record is about. Sarita McNeil’s music video places us deep within that Canadian winter. Our gaze is directed to thawing great lakes, bowing firs and decorative glasses refracting sunlight, toasting the extraordinary in the ordinary. On a swell of Buchla synthesizer, brushes, and droning piano and bass, Morris floats the question, “the ocean has no enemies / There is nothing greater than it / Written on a piece of paper / A five-year-old said it – was it then?” which seems to haunt the listener for the duration.

New Safe evokes a similar mood to The Microphones in 2020 by Mount Eerie songwriter Phil Elverum. Featuring accompanying footage of Elverum arranging a collage of early Polaroids, that self-mythology stripping record found the songwriter contemplating his past in his signature stream of consciousness style. Bittersweet and centred around an evolving acoustic pattern, Elverum’s attempt to move beyond yearning and the overall sense of acceptance, is closely mirrored in Morris’ own ‘spiral of experience’. Yet, for all the lightness and equanimity of Monastic Love Songs, there’s an equal undercurrent of discordance.

Buddhism claims that all phenomena inter-exist and here the human condition is explored in all its contrasting complexity. The mellow meander of Steadfast retells a clashing of personalities that then blossoms into an unlikely friendship. Meanwhile on Circus Wagon, one of the album’s most moving songs, Morris considers the patriarchal violence that has recently troubled his Shambhala community. Reminiscent of the imagery of Joanna Newsom’s Monkey & Bear, Morris searches for the right words, “I asked for freedom and freedom came / Broke the wheels of praise and blame / Circus wagon fell apart / I thought this was my chariot” as he reconsiders his faith.

So, you may be wondering, in the words of Buddhist superstar Tina Turner: “what’s love got to do, got to do with it?” Well, firstly there’s an obvious devotional feel here. Monastic Love Songs honours both the time spent and lessons learnt at Gampo Abbey. Morris clearly fell for much of the lifestyle and principles espoused. It could also refer to the curiosity and loving-kindness with which he’s approached these songs as well. Like the Zen riddles of old, love can be slippery.

In the final moments of Spring 96, the High Priest of Pathos compares the art of songwriting to rag picking. He encourages patience and perseverance when searching your pockets “to finally come up with something that you can inhabit that changes your mind about yourself. Changes your heart. And creates a man around this song.” Monastic Love Songs stirs with that same transformative promise. “That’s what it is. That’s what the great glory is,” he continues with a half-smile, “I think we should end.”