Cashavelly Morrison is a brave and ambitious soul, steeped in the deep-seated roots music of her native West Virginia yet untethered by the musical traditions that elicited her initial acclaim.
Her first few albums were by and large gorgeous Acoustic Americana affairs which captured the hearts of music lovers as well as press. Rolling Stone declared her an ‘Artist You Need to Know,’ she was awarded an Independent Music Award for Best Alternative Country Album and further delivered the goods with a coveted NPR Mountain Stage segment. 2018’s Hunger signaled a fuller sound, and her now fleshed out 5-piece band hit the road, playing with Lera Lynn, Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, and Matt Nathanson.
Together with her collaborator Ryan Macleod and her tightly knit group of seasoned musicians, Cashavelly fearlessly pushed her visceral sound forward, the dark Celtic strains of her past organically intertwining with more modern indie sensibilities. METAMORPHOSIS became the name of her new body of work, as well as a new ethos for her life. “It was time to step off the road that was paved by family and culture and step into the dark woods where there’s no trail,” she asserts, adding that the way she reached this tipping point was through relentless self examination. “The pain of keeping all my repression down began to outweigh the pain it would take to finally bring it out. Once you are prepared to lose everything to live authentically, magic happens.”
METAMORPHOSIS, which was tracked at Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville, NC, feels connected to a new sense of fearless abandon, conjuring up the untamed, explorative work of Joanna Newsom, Iron & Wine, Gillian Welch, Fiona Apple and War on Drugs. Clearly mining a profound new creative vein, Cashavelly wrote a screenplay and co-produced, co-directed, choreographed, and starred in a feature film to accompany the album, further examining the dichotomy between the physical plane and the great unseen mystery, spirit and ego, the primitive and civilized self. The film has won awards in the Montreal Independent Film Festival and the LA Independent Women Film Awards, and is an official selection of the Boston Independent Film Awards, and the Berlin International Art Film Festival, the Toronto International Women Film Festival.
The double LP was released Oct. 1st, 2021.