Music Review: Sarah Morris, ‘Say Yes’
The Minneapolis singer-songwriter’s radiant sixth album probes the uncertainty of life and encourages listeners to embrace the unknown.
Sarah Morris’ Say Yes album cover. Artwork by Aaron Stottlemyer.
The most enduring albums, I think, are those that provide equally enjoyable listening experiences whether you want to let voices and instruments wash over you, sweetening the background of wherever you’re hanging out, or you feel like tangling with complex ideas and deep emotions, guided by a songwriter’s inquisitiveness and insight.
With Say Yes, her sixth album of original material, Sarah Morris has achieved that perfect balance, employing her heavenly voice (and a cadre of ubertalented musicians and producers) and her well-honed lyrical instincts to produce a collection of songs both pretty and profound.
The record opens with what could easily be considered Sarah Morris’s manifesto. It’s a celebration of enjoying someone else’s “Glow”—the pleasure of watching someone else love their life, find success, get sparked by passion for something.
Would you tell me
Cause I wanna know
What does it feel like and
Where do you get that glow?
… please don’t stop
The world needs …
So much more
Of whatever it is you got
Morris is someone who devotes a remarkable amount of her life, energy, time and creativity to encouraging and supporting others—and clearly gets fulfillment and joy from hearing about the happiness and artistic accomplishments of others. Listening to this song, that altruistic urge is infectious. I like to imagine everyone who hears it will make a little extra effort to cheer on someone else’s pursuit of happiness.
After all that expansive joy, the opening lines of the next song pack a punch.
First thing I did was tear that paper to pieces
Nearly small enough to count as confetti
Though no one was celebrating that day
Set to a slightly countrified waltz, “Hard on a Heart” never reveals what the piece of paper was or what it said; despite the vivid specificity of that moment, the song stays circumspect about what the narrator is going through—letting it be a universal cry that can apply to anyone’s heartbreak or defeat:
It’s hard on a heart
All the starts and the endings
It’s hard on a heart
The long middle with its mostly pretending
Morris offers no solution for this type of pain, just “go pick your poison / Play all your cards / Wherever you go / There you are.” But there’s deep empathy in acknowledging that some sadness just needs to be sat with and experienced and gotten through with no easy out.
The rich variety of subject matter in Morris's songwriting becomes clear by track 3, an ode to the thrill and the danger of falling hard for someone. The siren imagery in “Never Be the Same” is impeccable, and what starts as a quiet, somewhat eerie tune launches into a heart-pounding crescendo at the end that makes you feel the crashing waves lifting you up and threatening to pull you under—or smash you to pieces on the rocky shore.
Sarah Morris. Photo Credit: no_aesthetic_stills (Sammie Jean Cohen).
The next two songs turn her curious mind and keen eye toward nature, and human nature. First she ponders the constant encroachment and taming of the natural world by humanity, wondering if there’s anywhere left in our world that is “Truly Wild.” This is followed by a song about trusting in the sometimes elusive, inscrutable and unpredictable concept of “Love.” This track inspired the title of Say Yes with these lines that moved Morris to tears as she realized the transformative power of embracing the unknown:
It will ask you to fall
Say yes
Yes to the tumbling down
Turning inside and out
And yes when it ends …
Yes, even then
“The One I Choose” is an unusual song about trying to find the kindest and least destructive way to leave someone. The song explores various scenarios, wondering “Does one cause a lesser wound? / Well that’s the one I choose.” It ends on a bit of a twist that ties the song back into that recurring theme of the album, that we’re all on the edge of the unknown, whether we choose to ponder that fact or pack it tidily away out of sight.
We return to Morris’s love of nature, specifically her well-documented adoration of the sky, with “The Stars Are Back.” Even something as permanent as those distant suns surrounding us can disappear from our human eyes when it’s cloudy, and despite her certainty that “they are constant and true,” she adds a note of the unknowable that weaves through Say Yes: “I for one refuse to take them for granted.”
The next two tracks, “Some of That Is True” and “Houston,” add complexity to the album’s theme of embracing the unknown by pointing out how the vagaries of human memory—including our tendency to embellish recollections to make a better story—are part of what makes the world far from straightforward and full of mysteries. The latter song’s chorus sums it up:
Maybe the breeze was easy
Maybe the moon was high
I wish I’d paid more attention
Stitched every detail to the folds of my mind
I think I took for granted we’d be back there soon
The last song on Say Yes, “Yeah, Yeah,” is the first one I heard off the album, thanks to a live performance video we premiered back in August.
So let's talk about “Yeah, Yeah.” This earworm. BEWARE THIS EARWORM. This lovely, languid little song will cozy up to you, make you smile about the delightful beginnings of relationships … and then it will burrow into your head and refuse to leave for weeks. (That said, you should definitely listen—it’s worth it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!)
It’s a sweet and comforting way to end an exploration of concepts that can be a little scary, a little sad, with this gentle song about a love so certain, so solid and deep, that all it was waiting for was a simple question and answer to make it official.
Say Yes is a collection of beautiful sounds that can be enjoyed on its surface: Several family members who heard bits of it in passing as I was listening for the first time remarked on it. (“What is this whimsical music?” asked my whimsy-loving teenage daughter.) It’s also a complex and exquisitely written exploration of the uncertainty of life ... or rather the transience of certainty, which comes and goes in our lives, sometimes causing bitterness and desolation, other times leaving room for excitement and wonder.
Take it and listen whichever way you choose; I’m certain Sarah Morris will just be glad to have given you something to enjoy—something that maybe, for however long, gives you that glow.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Adventures in Americana co-founder Carol Roth is a novelist who publishes both under her name and the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley in a range of genres, from horror to thriller to YA. She loves to play guitar, sing and occasionally write songs. Her wide-ranging passions also include vegan cooking, personal finance, watching queer romance TV/movies and learning to speak Thai. By day she’s a marketing writer/brand strategist.
