Press release by John Adamian (Relix, Wired):
The singer/songwriter/guitarist Morgan Geer, aka Drunken Prayer, spent much of last year on the road in support of his 2019 release “Cordelia Elsewhere,” an album that pondered the thoroughly mixed-up state of America — and the individual American — in the Trump era. But 2020 is, well, a whole different bag. And Geer has some other things on his mind. Now, a few weeks into an experiment in forced solitude due to a global pandemic, Geer has a song that speaks to the particular madness of our moment. Geer recorded it all by his lonesome at his home in West Asheville, North Carolina, where he (and his family) are riding out this unprecedented stretch of mandatory down time.
“Crazy Alone” is a playfully loco tune about losing your shit. In the true spirit of solitary confinement, Geer recorded this song all by himself, with layered vocal harmonies adding a nice woozy and bonkers vibe to this meditation on isolation. It’s all him, a sonic hall of mirrors for those of us staring at our reflections and wondering what the hell is going on. He’s like a one-man Langley School, making something both ethereal and haunting. Imagine Brian Wilson in lock-down at the piano in his sandbox, only with a little help from the terse and bluesy minimalism of JJ Cale. The result is like a slightly crooked hand-rolled cigarette: a homespun something to calm the jitters and measure out a few minutes of precious time.
The funny-faced French existentialist and playwright J.P. Sartre famously said that “hell is other people” — or he had one of his characters say it, at least. And while we could debate what that actually means, in terms of how our interactions with others and our awareness of their own consciousness and perspective causes us suffering and anguish, on another level it is true that the boiled-down wisdom of the quote, that other people are the worst, is hard to argue with. In this time of global crisis, there are particular people — irresponsible leaders, psychopaths, compulsive liars, greedy fucks — that seem to be the worst of the worst. The most hellish. And yet, as we all hole up in our homes, trying our best to ride out the spread of Covid-19, trying to avoid getting our loved ones sick, trying not to panic over the immolation of the global economy, the effects of isolation and solitude start to weigh on some of us. We’re all going crazy. And some of us are going crazy alone.
A different version of this song will likely be included on the next Drunken Prayer record, which will come out some time after the world gets up and running again.