Indie rock band Typhoon took fans by surprise with the release of their previously unannounced fifth studio album “Sympathetic Magic”, out now via Roll Call Records. This is the Portland band’s first album since 2018’s Offerings.
Typhoon frontman Kyle Morton wrote and tracked a significant part of the record in his basement studio while quarantining with his wife and dog. “Empire Builder” stands out as a testament to Morton’s compelling song writing as he captures a view of America that is full of paranoia and cynicism, but not without hope: “Tiny points of life I see haphazardly / scattered in the void like so much bird seed / and I hope it’s enough.” The band’s large line-up, at times 11 members strong, came together through remote and individual socially distanced sessions to complete the LP.
Kyle / Typhoon says Small news in the big scheme, but we finished a record and I wanted to share it with you. I wrote all these songs while puttering around the house these past several months, because, what else was I going to do? The songs are about people – the space between them and the ordinary, miraculous things that happen there, as we come into contact, imitate each other, leave our marks, lose touch. Being self and other somehow amounting to the same thing.
Recording had to be adapted to the plague-times. I tracked the demos first and sent them out to the band. Then the improvised procession of friends dropping by my basement, one at a time, masks on. Other folks recorded their parts in their own homes with cell phone voice memos or GarageBand in the laundry room. Parts from the original demos remain intact. Like everything right now, it was all a little disjointed, but I think it came together in the end.
The record is called Sympathetic Magic and it’s a great joy to share it with you. To be honest, it’s a joy to share anything at all in these isolating times.
Typhoon’s “Offerings” was released way back in January, and nearly 12 months later, it is still one of the year’s finest records. Musically and lyrically, Offerings carries a heft that very few albums can do without feeling overwhelming. In making the record, Typhoon’s creative source Kyle Morton asked himself, “What does a person become if they don’t know where they came from? What is the essential quality of the person if you strip away all memory?”
The tracks on Offerings range from huge epics to spoken word to ambient journeys and many places in between. It’s impossible to go through the whole album and tell its story, and there’s no way a couple of paragraphs on this list will come close to doing it justice. However, there are some truly important tracks on it, such as the immense sound of “Rorschach”, the beautiful orchestration of “Empiricist”, and the unnerving hypnoticism of “Unusual”.
Offerings is an immersive, intense record that will define Typhoon’s career. It’s important, and it’s groundbreaking. They’ve broken out of a crowded indie folk scene and have truly created something to behold. In the process, they’ve told a story that no else can nor will do.
Typhoon’s full-length album, Offerings, out now on Roll Call Records
Typhoon is back with their fourth album, Offerings , which will also be their first album since 2013. The main man behind the band, Kyle Morton, has discussed how he’s interested in the loss of memory, both on the individual level and collectively as a society. “Rorschach,” the second track on the album, speaks to that theme (“How you gonna hold on to your memories?/ How you gonna hold on when you know that you can’t?”). Based on the track list, this album is sure to be a journey through the emotional phases of loss, with “Rorschach” marking a cathartic moment of frustration about the circumstances that you’ve been presented with.
“Rorschach” is off of Typhoon’s full-length album, Offerings, out now on Roll Call Records.
Typhoon‘s colossal and ambitious fourth LP Offerings is available everywhere . The album, which follows the journey of a man struggling to cope with the loss of his memories, has already garnered praise from NPR, Stereogum, and more for its unmatched lyricism and profound storytelling.
‘“Good lord this Typhoon album is brilliant…haven’t cried listening to a record since [Sufjan Stevens’].” Offerings is truly a wise and ruminative record.” – Bob Boilen, NPR
“The first compelling album of 2018” – Daily Mail (★★★★)
“Typhoon has succeeded in creating a profoundly human and poetic masterpiece on the edge of the concrete, which despite all its ambition remains multi-layered and cohesive at the same time (…) Rarely ever has forgetting been set to a better soundtrack and more appropriately staged than on this album. 9/10″ – Plattentests
“… one of the most ambitious, delicate, heartbreaking recordings ever.” – Vortex Magazine
“As early as we are into 2018 as we may be, Offerings already stands as a rare example of a band shooting for a terrifyingly ambitious album that not only holds up to that immense pressure, but exceeds expectations and succeeds on multiple levels, both grand and subtle. If you haven’t been paying attention to Typhoon already, it’s time to change that. 9/10”
It’s been over four years since Portland-based Typhoon released White Lighter, and in that time singer-songwriter Kyle Morton has been grappling with the idea of “losing it”—the struggles a person endures when battling a deteriorating brain. On the band’s fourth full-length, Offerings, Morton funnels his own fears through a fictional character who is losing both his mind and sense of self.
The record is split into four movements—”Floodplains,” “Flood,” “Reckoning,” and “Afterparty”—each one illustrating a phase of the the character’s journey, from his realization that something is wrong, and the long struggle that follows, to his acceptance of his fate, dreadful as it may be. The 11-piece folk-rock ensemble creates an eerie backdrop for Morton’s stories, full of delicately plucked guitars, screeching violins, and, on opener “Wake,” the faint sound of static, as Morton has a premonition: “Of all the things you’re about to lose, this will be the most painful.”
The record ebbs and flows, swinging from cacophonic sounds to joyous melodies, until arriving at calmness in the aptly titled closing track, “Sleep,” led by Morton’s forlorn vocals and a quietly strummed acoustic guitar.
Morton voices the doomed main character as he tries to navigate his condition—a situation complicated by the current political climate, which offers a compelling argument that the planet may need to be demolished before it can reset itself. The parallel between private and public chaos comes into full relief on “Rorschach,” which explores the age of information and collapse of meaning, which only adds to the narrator’s sense of disorientation and confusion.
Offeringsis a chilling journey through the workings of the inner mind, and though it’s not an easy listen, its intricacies gain greater depth on repeated listens.
Typhoon frontman and songwriter Kyle Morton released a solo album, What Will Destroy You, in September. The record’s a collection of compact and beautifully-recorded songs that get at different kinds of love, from the romantic to the twisted. It’s a far cry from the bombast and catharsis of Typhoon’s music, but very much in line with a recent project Morton made with his friend, filmmaker Matthew Thomas Ross, called “Book of Matches.” That series of films, each a minute long, required Morton to compose miniatures to match each film, and with an added limitation he gave himself: to write each one within a day.
For the new album, Morton wrote many of the songs in extended moments of ordinary life: waiting for his phone to charge, or while taking a walk. In our interview, he spoke about it in contradictory terms, calling this a “minor release” (free of the production demands or structure of a Typhoon record) and poking fun at himself for writing so much about death. But however simple, the record doesn’t play as a throwaway extra. In the more intimate spaces of these songs, Morton’s knack for small details, reach for meaning and ever-present sense of mortality, and bits of black humor make for a powerful listen.
To hear more about writing these songs — the romantic “My Little Darlin Knows My Nature,” and darker songs “Survivalist Fantasy” and “Poor Bastard” — plus news about the upcoming Typhoon record in 2017.
The debut solo album by Typhoon frontman Kyle Morton available everywhere now and on vinyl via Bug Hunt.
Typhoon is an American indie rock band from Oregon. The band has eleven members. They have released four albums, two EPs, a split 7-inch record with Olympia-based band Lake, and have contributed to a number of compilations. The band’s fifth album Offerings is scheduled for release on January 12th, 2018. The band originated in Salem, Oregon in 2005 but is now based in Portland, Oregon. They are signed to the indie record label Roll Call Records.
Typhoon is back with their LP Offerings. There are currently two variants. A blood red 2xLP which looks to be gone soon (19 left on the webstore) and the other is an indie exclusive gold edition limited to 1400 copies verified through Rough Trade as a 2xLP. This record sounds monumental, so get your hands on it before it slips away. Enjoy!.
Typhoon’s Kyle Morton performs an acoustic, piano version of “Prosthetic Love”, off of their album White Lighter
It brings me great pleasure to announce our new record. It’s called Offerings and it is a seventy-minute exploration of memory and sacrifice in three movements, the first of which is available now for your immediate listening pleasure.
Without giving too much away. I wanted to share with you an email I wrote to our manager back in May. I had just sent him the final masters and he was asking the sensible question: What is it all about?
It’s a record from the perspective of a mind losing its memory at precisely the same time the world is willfully forgetting its history. The urgent question becomes: without casualty, without structures of meaning, without essential features of rational thought, is there anything that can save us from violence / oblivion?
With no past and no future, there is only suffocating, annihilating present, looping on and on ad infinitum (to me, one plausible definition of hell) and the best you can hope for is that somewhere in the void there exists some small, irreducible certainty—a fragment, a kernel, something—that you may have the good future to stumble upon before it’s all over.
You know, a boy/girl-meets-girl/boy-everyone-dies-in-botched-attempt-at-neo-pagan-sacrificial-ritual-on-global-scale kind of thing.
FLOODPLAINS Down in the floodplains waiting on a cure Blessed be the water may the water make us pure Forms will be unborn in the mirror within the mirror Rejoice now, Rejoice now The Reckoning is here.
WAKE Wake and I have been reborn. The tide concedes that homely shore and I am benighted. All my lines unlearned. Cry out will God (or somebody) please turn the light on. Restore me to that empty room—expands out like hot air balloons. A woman comes she brings me food. I shit the bed in solitude. My life one brief unbroken loop—goes round and round with nothing left to hold onto. But if there’s nothing, if there’s nothing, then what’s that song that keeps hounding me? In the still dark of the morning. Just one more cradle down the creek. Au revoir my little memories. Tell me: This is not your loss. This is your offering.
RORSCHACH Eyes on the screen. We have all the information now but what does it mean? Reason’s a tease. Drank up all that hemlock, here I am just reading the leaves. Left wondering: what happened to the life we lost, that got lost in the living? All this fiction makes me nervous, turns out it was blood spilled on the canvas we admired just like some Rorschach painting. The film in your brain—it edits to remember, keeps the figure in the frame. A sacrificial violence, all those passed over in silence then cast out with the blame. And I’m trying to stay sane—meanwhile, the river of forgetfulness starts spilling the banks. Caught in a lie and instead of fessing up we’d sooner just go out of our heads. I’ve been holding up my end when I should have doubled down on my own atom bomb shelter instead.
EMPIRICIST Empty room. Cast about for a familiar object. Because my body needs coordinates to move. In the dark. Range of motion shrivels all around me. All my nightmares I am slowly being cocooned. A single calf in the hecatomb. Crescent moon. Hollowed out of all my fabled insides. Occam shave me down to primal truth—return me to the womb. Mother pulled from father’s ribs, little baby in a crib, hands reaching up. Before the blinding light is split through the prism of your organs into color. All that being and nothingness, on the same möbius strip. Sleep and waking up. On the first day. Wipe the blank slate. And you join the banquet. Served up helpless on a plate. You find your land legs. And you learn to imitate. You’ll wear any feathers and hope that your efforts attract a mate. One day your children find you, locked in the bathroom, staring in horror at the reflection of your face. You say you’re sorry to the guests at your party. But you can’t help wonder, who is this person you celebrate? And so the light fades. It’s still your birthday. Blow out your past lives like they’re candles on the cake.
ALGERNON A woman leans in her chair. Holds her face close to mine. She’s curious, am I comfortable? Would I care to give it one more try? She holds the picture up while she studies my eyes. I’m trying hard to recall the routine, but I can’t and so I improvise. This one’s of my father. Wearing ladies clothes. I walked in on him once as a kid. Must have thought nobody else was home. It’s a lie and she knows. But there’s no other use. And anyway what you want and what you want to be are easily confused. The moment stretches on. Like the first day of school and I’ve answered wrong. Like a self-enclosed short-circuit goes around forever until it’s gone. A woman shrinks in her chair. She says the picture’s of you. I have no idea what she’s talking about but I nod my head as if I do. Look at there such a strong man. All the virtues of youth. You led a good life by every account. There were people who looked up to you. I say enough is enough. You have found me out. You have called my bluff. I don’t know anything about this stuff. I’m just tired and I’m waiting for my wife to pick me up. A woman slouched in her chair disrupts the silence to say. The part of you that I love is still in there even if it doesn’t know my name. The moment stretches on. Like the colonnade at the Parthenon. It’s an unmarked grave but somebody’s laid some flowers for Algernon.
Typhoon is an indie rock band from Portland, Oregon.
Floodplains – featuring the songs “Wake”, “Rorschach”, “Empiricist” and “Algernon” – is the first movement of Typhoon’s forthcoming full length album, Offerings. Offerings will be released on January 12th, 2018 on Roll Call Records.
The last several years for Typhoon have been–as I’m sure you can sympathize–a total blur. While the tenets of yoga and twitter may advise you to live in the present, it’s always healthy practice to look backwards from time to time.
Before we get rolling on the new record cycle, I wanted to share something we have in the archives.
On December 7th, 2013–one of the coldest nights in Portland’s recorded history--Typhoon collaborated with our dear friends at La Blogotheque and a handful of our very talented musical colleagues to film a takeaway show in an empty warehouse performing songs from an album we had released that year called White Lighter. Sadly, the release of the video was hampered by unforeseen circumstances and the project was shelved indefinitely.
I want to thank Art, Joel, Sam, Jamie, Drew, Margaux, Matthieu and all the incredible folks at La Blogothèque for making this happen; I also want to thank our friends, family and fans who braved the weather to watch; and a huge hats off to our guest orchestra members who were both talented and generous enough to play strings, brass and woodwinds in zero degree temperatures with us.
km 08.07.17
Additional Musicians:
Anna Stipe – Bassoon
Ben Magaziner – Viola
Holland Andrews – Clarinet
Patrick Phillips – Tuba
Rie Tanabe – Viola
Samantha Kushnick – Cello
I first met Typhoon in 2011. We climbed trees in the back of an old Austin home before one of their SXSW showcases. And even though we spent less than 20 minutes together that day, they made a deep impression on me and quickly became one of my new favorite bands.
Our paths would cross from time to time in the coming years, each time more special than the last.
But then the White Lighter album came out: one of the most emotional, personal and complete albums of the past 10 years, as far as I’m concerned. I am often touched by songs, but few times does an entire album become the soundtrack to my life. And the more I became obsessed with this album, the more I couldn’t believe how few people knew about it. So I knew that I wanted— no— I needed— to do something with them again.
I emailed Kyle and asked what he thought about doing a secret show where only a few fans could see them play, as if it was a rehearsal. Luckily for me, he obliged.
I arrived in Portland with some of my best friends to film this experience. But we didn’t anticipate the weather. It was the coldest weekend that Portland had in decades. It was so cold that we were genuinely concerned that some of the instruments wouldn’t play right. But as soon as Kyle and the band started playing, that fear quickly subsided. It was almost as if Kyle conducted the temperature in that room the same way he conducts his band: with grace, love, and a gentle wisdom that only he holds— and it’s inspiring and jaw-dropping to witness live.
Any fan of Typhoon will tell you how much their music means to them. It’s personal, it’s sincere, and it makes you tackle emotions you hold deep and don’t take out very often. And for that, they are magic.
The debut solo album by Typhoon frontman Kyle Morton available everywhere now and on vinyl via Bug Hunt. Typhoon is an band from Portland, OR. They’ve released three albums and will be releasing their fourth in 2017.
Kyle will embark on his first solo US tour in January 2017 in support of What Will Destroy You. Sets will feature music from the album, as well as Typhoon fan favorites and songs from the band’s forthcoming full length album, which is set for release in 2017. The solo tour sees Kyle trading in the expansive venues that generally house Typhoon’s concerts, like New York’s Webster Hall and DC’s 9:30 Club, for the intimate environs of Rough Trade NYC and DC’s Sixth & I Synagogue, creating a special evening for those in attendance.
Of the album, Kyle says, “Most of these songs were written in about a day, many of them while walking aimlessly around Portland, others wrote themselves in the moments just before sleep. They were recorded and mixed with the invaluable help of Paul Laxer from the inviolate comfort of his living room, mostly in the evenings during the winter and early spring of 2015. At the outset there was no deliberate attempt at an overarching concept, though once finished and lined up together the theme of my subconscious was revealed to me: this was a record about love, more specifically (not devolving into platitudes just yet), the ambivalence of erotic love.”
“With a couple exceptions these songs are about kinds of love, from old fashioned heartache to acute sadomasochism; some drawn from personal experience and others extrapolated from years of keen observation on the subject.”
The Fat Angel Sings 