Smidley saddles Murphy Horse and lets Lucy Dacus make Capstone glow

Smidley’s Murphy Horse announcement on 25 June gives Conor Murphy another life after Foxing’s indefinite hiatus, and the lead single Capstone makes the return feel surprisingly buoyant. The new album turns Smidley into a full-band operation with Foxing bassist Brett Torrence on guitar, Mitch Renfrew on bass and Jack Middeke on drums, plus guests including NNAMDÏ, Shinra Knives, Adam Schatz, Brooks Tipton and Lucy Dacus. Capstone features Dacus in full bright-chorus mode, adding warmth to a strutting, percussive love song about romance as the peak experience after a life of wandering. That is a sweetly uncool subject, which is partly why it works. Murphy has never been afraid of emotional excess, and Murphy Horse sounds like a record ready to let side-project energy become main-character energy.

Source: https://stereogum.com/2503368/foxings-conor-murphy-announces-new-smidley-album-murphy-horse-hear-capstone-feat-lucy-dacus/music