Conor Murphy has never treated songwriting as simple confession. His best work runs lived experience through surreal imagery, dry humor and emotional ambiguity, so personal observations end up sounding like broader ones. ‘Murphy Horse,’ released under the Smidley name, may be his most fully realized statement, widening his musical range while keeping the vulnerability that has always made his writing compelling. It’s an album where memory behaves unpredictably, relationships resist neat labels, and identity is something always in motion.
Murphy takes on nearly every role. He wrote the lyrics, produced and recorded the album in St. Louis, and plays vocals, guitar, piano, bass, synthesizer, drums, percussion, sampler, trumpet and French horn. Still, it never feels solitary. Smidley’s core members, guitarist Brett Torrence, bassist Mitch Renfrew and drummer Jack Middeke, give the record real cohesion, and a strong set of guests keeps opening up its emotional and sonic range. Joe Reinhart’s mix brings out the small details without losing immediacy, and Ryan Schwabe’s mastering keeps both warmth and clarity as the album moves between intimate and expansive.
The opener, “Corpse Flower,” featuring Shinra Knives, makes it clear Murphy isn’t interested in indie-rock convention. Ian Jones adds electronic production that broadens the palette without burying the organic core, and his vocals and Chanele McGuinness’s harmonies sit somewhere between fragile and quietly resilient. The title suggests death, but the song is as much about regrowth as decay, and about how endings can turn into starting points.
“Capstone” pairs Murphy with Lucy Dacus, whose voice adds richness through understatement instead of contrast. Their singing feels like conversation, each line deepening the other. Adam Schatz’s saxophone adds subtle melodic shading and warmth. Rather than celebrating an achievement, the song asks whether life’s milestones really satisfy us or just become markers on the way to new uncertainties. The title track sits at the album’s center without announcing it. Blake Murphy’s vocals give it a familiar quality and reinforce its themes of inheritance, personal mythology and the way people carry pieces of the past into every new chapter. Conor’s arrangement stays economical, trusting layered instrumentation to say what words can’t.
“Love In Every Direction” best captures the record’s generous spirit. Dominic Angelella’s expressive guitar, Brooks Tipton’s piano and synthesizer, and Jones’s electronic textures make it one of the album’s richest arrangements. Murphy rejects the idea of love as a fixed destination and treats it as something that changes shape without losing its meaning, and the music follows suit, moving between inward passages and wide-open ones. “Today Was A Wash” turns a seemingly insignificant day into a quiet revelation. Murphy has always been good at finding meaning in ordinary moments, and here he handles disappointment with restraint. He doesn’t dramatize failure. He looks at the residue left by days that seem to matter little until you see them from further away.
“Friendly’s” shows his sensitivity to place. A familiar spot becomes a store of shared memories, changed relationships and earlier versions of yourself. Ryan Wasoba’s guitar, Schatz’s saxophone, Tipton’s keyboards and Jones’s electronics add subtle detail, each layer deepening the song’s quietly expansive feeling. On “People Like You,” Murphy looks at perception itself and how quickly assumptions harden into stories about other people. The lyrics avoid easy moral conclusions and acknowledge both how hard another person is to understand and where empathy runs out. Torrence, Renfrew and Middeke provide a responsive foundation, and the song’s reflective mood comes from the band’s give-and-take, not from big dramatic gestures.
“Robin Egg,” featuring NNAMDÏ, is among the boldest tracks. Nnamdi Ogbonnaya’s voice brings fresh rhythmic and melodic ideas, while Murphy, Victoria Renfrew and Jones add harmonies that keep reshaping the song’s mood. It won’t settle into a single style, mixing electronic experimentation, sophisticated melody and group singing into a whole that stays emotionally direct despite its complexity. After something that adventurous, “Nearer To You” is a welcome moment of closeness. Murphy strips the arrangement back so melody and lyric come forward. The song treats closeness as something you aim for, not something you’ve achieved, and suggests real intimacy means accepting another person’s mystery instead of trying to remove it.
“Old Things Never Die” closes the album with neither resolution nor nostalgia. Murphy suggests that memory keeps changing along with the present, reworking experience instead of just storing it. McGuinness, Murphy and Victoria Renfrew sing warm, bright harmonies that make the finale feel like a group reflection on what lasts, and the arrangement brings back several ideas from earlier in the album. The ending settles for acceptance instead of answers.
Murphy covers a lot of ground here, as a writer and as a multi-instrumentalist, and he’s clearly more interested in feel and storytelling than in showing off. The trumpet and French horn are used sparingly, dropped in exactly where they help. Every collaborator adds to the record’s central vision, whether it’s Dacus’s graceful vocals, Schatz’s saxophone, Angelella’s guitar, Tipton’s keyboards or Jones’s electronics on several key tracks.
‘Murphy Horse’ embraces complexity without turning obscure. Murphy trusts listeners to move through uncertainty with him, offering songs that ask real questions instead of handing out convenient answers. It’s melodic, curious and generous, and it shows Smidley can keep reinventing itself while staying grounded in the honesty that has always defined Murphy’s writing. Every song feeds a cohesive statement about memory, connection and learning who you are through other people, which makes this one of the most nuanced and satisfying records of his career.
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