Ed O'Brien on SiriusXMU with Jenny

Ed O'Brien premieres the title track of Blue Morpho with Jenny Eliscu on the day the album was announced, and he is funny about the wait. The record had been finished nearly a year earlier and had simply sat there, and until something is actually released he does not believe it will be. Putting a record out, he says, is finally letting go of it, which lets him move on, and he compares it to sending children out into the world.

The songs began around 2021, out of a dark period. The gift of writing, he says, is being able to take difficult moments and spin them into something beautiful, and that is the essence of all of them.

The healing happened in Wales, where the family has a home, and specifically outdoors, among the birds, the hills, the valleys, the woods and the paths, and in the river and the sea. The record, he says, is rooted there.

On “Blue Morpho” itself he credits the arranger he handed it to, saying the string writing elevates the whole thing, and admits that trusting the process does not always work out and did this time.