"The prolific Melbourne duo level up on new album Barnyard" - NME

"Everything's looking good for Good Morning" - Billboard

"Chill and organic indie rock, but there are some slight stylistic differences due to each member taking lead vocals on some Lennon-McCartney shit..." - Stereogum

"Country feels like the culmination of everything that Good Morning have spent their almost-decade together working towards" - Rolling Stone

"The Australians are coming out in full force" - Paste Magazine

Good Morning are rulebreakers. Not in a sexy, flamboyant way - more in a casual, resigned kind of way. Accidental and incidental rulebreakers. The creation and release of their sixth album, out today, is the result of a process of patient refinement and the breaking of a couple of self-imposed rules. Australian duo Liam Parsons and Stefan Blair recorded Barnyard pre-pandemic at Wilco's famed studio The Loft in Chicago. For the first time in a long time, a Good Morning record was made with the help of an outside engineer. Barnyard is thoughtful, catchy, and idiosyncratic – all the things one might love about Good Morning – and nearly twice the average length of their back catalogue. Order your copy on Blue-In-Clear vinyl from the Polyvinyl Store. 

Barnyard is Good Morning at their most meditative, thoughtful and careful in its evocations - their catchiest too. It’s a world-weary record concerned with the state of things in a loose, unfocused sort of way, like many who are also frustrated both with the way things are and with everyone’s general inability to fix any of the many issues endemic to our society, complete with everything we’ve come to know them for - drone synths, ambient sketches and country ballads with their token sense of humour. Every time the machinations of the industry have zigged, Good Morning have zagged and it’s probably why people like them so much. Barnyard, however, proves just how serious their craft has been all along.

 At The Loft, they found not only gear, but also a kindred spirit in Tom Schick, the studio’s in-house engineer. In the initial recording sessions, Tom was a guiding force, encouraging the band to actually record their demos instead of just trying out gear or talking shit for hours on end; as their time together grew, he became a close accomplice, the first non-friend ever brought in to help them record and, as such, a significant force in the outcome. The 12 tracks that comprise Barnyard are melodically and structurally unimpeachable, not overworked or over-proofed — just wonderful, appealing rock songs that are never laboured with overbearing production choices or self-serious tone, even when the content regards a world in decline. 

Including the previously released, part Tweedy, part 'Taxman' piano ballad "Burning", a scathing address to climate inaction; the rousing appeal to return to a simpler time in "Country"; and the groovy, power chord laden "Depends On What I Know"; are new features including "Big Wig // Small Dog" a takedown of the generally useless and pigheaded ego’s who parade through life and the music industry; a recount of bellyache inducing love on "Tree", the kind that sees one overcome with a desire to do literally anything for their lover; and a considerate reflection of vices in “Green Skies”, to name a few.

Although those seeking grand reinvention or earth-shaking hubris in Barnyard will come up short. This is an album of good, well-made, finely-written songs, notable for its purity and coherence of vision, but not by any means a concept album; it is a record significant in Good Morning’s history, but not one with such self-importance that it would consider itself historically significant for all. That is likely what those drawn to it will love about it. Barnyard is not too little and not too much. It’s just right - just Good Morning.