Morgan Wade The Party Is Over (CD)

Morgan Wade has never been one to hold back or be coy with words, a fact she repeatedly emphasizes on her new album “The Party Is Over (recovered)”. As the follow-up to the acclaimed album “Obsessed” from 2024, Wade continues her intensive exploration of the depths of her soul in eleven songs, which she has once again written solo.
As always, the result is captivating. As the title of the project suggests, some of the songs date from before Wade's major label contract and have been “rediscovered” here in completely new versions. Wade's longtime collaborator and touring bandmate Clint Wells produced the album and found the right nuances to underscore Wade's fearless tales of dangerous attraction, unrequited love and bad decisions. The album's title track, “The Party Is Over” - one of Wade's older songs - is a rousing anthem about attraction that resonates long after the intoxicants wear off, while lead single “East Coast” takes those fixations to the extreme in its depiction of a relationship that pushes someone to the brink. “High in Your Apartment” offers a haunting depiction of a loveless affair amidst a stormy sea of guitar noise, and album-closer “Hardwood Floor” tells of a woman's agonizing struggle to become a mother.
Wade accomplishes all of this while effortlessly switching between different musical styles. She's completely at home in guitar-heavy songs like the twangy punk banger “Candy from Strangers” and the stormy grunge song “Songs I Won't Remember”, but she's equally capable of conveying tenderness and vulnerability in the swirling R&B song “Parking Garage” or the acoustic sounds of “Stay”. What's more, she sounds like no other and speaks her mind bluntly. The Party Is Over (recovered), which connects Wade's past and present, shows that she has lost none of her determination to shed light on the dark corners where the truth hides.