Ed O’Brien – Blue Morpho
Ed O’Brien has announced Blue Morpho, his second solo album and first released under his name, out May 22 via Transgressive. The follow-up to 2020’s Earth — released under the EOB moniker just as the pandemic shut everything down — has been a long time coming, and the story behind it is worth knowing before you press play.
After Earth came out to an empty touring calendar, O’Brien fell into what he describes as the deepest depression of his life. On the advice of his wife, he began immersing himself in the breathing and cold-exposure work of Wim Hof, then locking himself in his small London studio to play guitar for hours, with no direction and no goal. He quotes Kentucky poet and farmer Wendell Berry as his guiding principle throughout: “To know the dark, go dark.” Thom Yorke’s old advice to catalogue ideas rather than chase them also shaped the process — O’Brien kept a record of everything, and over four years those fragments became Blue Morpho. He also retreated increasingly to Wales, where he’d bought a house in 2013 on the remains of a Roman villa, surrounded by ancient oaks and running water. The writing, he says, began to bloom there.
The production team assembled around the record is worth unpacking. O’Brien met Paul Epworth because their kids attended the same school; Epworth, despite his CV credits with Adele and Paul McCartney, was apparently just as hesitant to ask O’Brien. They worked in weekly sessions in Wales with engineer Riley MacIntyre before finishing at Epworth’s Church Studios in London. Shabaka Hutchings came on board after he and O’Brien got talking at Glastonbury about instruments tuned to 432 Hz — O’Brien asked him to stop by and play flute, and he did.
The title track, which runs to six minutes, gives a reasonable first read on where the album sits. It’s built around a knotty guitar melody, with strings that swell through the arrangement and O’Brien’s voice drifting in and out. What I notice is how patient it stays — there’s no obvious structural payoff being held back, just the song finding its weight slowly.
An accompanying short film, Blue Morpho: The Three Act Play, premiered at SXSW on March 16 and will be released with the album. O’Brien says he’s still working out how to play the material live; there are no tour dates announced yet, though he’s confirmed Radiohead will return to the road in 2027, playing 20 shows per continent per year. Blue Morpho feels like an artist genuinely rebuilding from scratch — not performing the idea of a solo record, but actually making one. That’s what put it in the week.
Tracklist:
- Incantations
- Blue Morpho
- Sweet Spot
- Teachers
- Solfeggio
- Thin Places
- Obrigado
