Author: Max Brzezinski
SLUICE A-to-Z
Sluice’s episode of Shaped by Sound airs on PBS NC Thursday, February 13th at 9:30 PM, and can subsequently be found on YouTube and the PBS app. Led by young singer-songwriter Justin Morris, Sluice made a critical splash with 2023’s album RADIAL GATE. Raised in Winston-Salem and now calling Durham home, Sluice plays charmingly spacious folk rock. Morris’s yarns take an at times cartoonish but always tender approach to the beauty and longing at the heart of contemporary life.
Not yet up on this up-and-coming band? You’re in luck! We’ve provided a primer below (and a playlist here). And because a deep dive into a group with one LP and one EP would be silly, we’ve taken a breezier look at the band with “SLUICE A-to-Z.” It’s an alphabetic index of some of the group’s key figures, techniques, themes and influences.
A is for Avery Sullivan, drummer. Sullivan keeps time in unshowy, steady service to Morris’s vocals and guitar. This is spacious music that requires sonic separation, and that’s what Sullivan provides.
B is for Bruce Springsteen, Dad Rock First Ballot Hall-of-Famer, and an obsession of Morris’s father. Which is interesting, as Morris studiously avoids the anthem of broad gestures and collective sentiment. What Morris shares with The Boss is a penchant for an eye for the luminous detail, the sort of songwriting which grounds a track in the particular and material.
C is for Callahan, Bill, undeniably Sluice’s prime influence, what Harold Bloom would have called their “strong precursor.” Which is interesting, because Justin Morris was born in 1990, the year the first Smog record, Forgotten Foundation, was released. Morris’s vocal timing, lyrics, and guitar playing all bear the marks of the lighter, mid-fi period of Bill Callahan’s career (records like Supper, A River Ain’t Too Much to Love, Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle, Apocalypse).
Of course, Morris knows this – he calls himself a “cartoon Callahan” on arguably his smoggiest song, “Fourth of July.” And this is how he adds something to his influence – self-deprecation. Even on his most humorous songs, Bill Callahan sounds so forthright and sure about how the world works – Morris leaves open room for ambiguity, doubt, confusion, and the pleasures of admitting ignorance. And the closer you listen, the more differences you hear: to name just one example, Morris’s voice is higher and more technically melodious than Callahan’s…
D is Desultory. You can count on a Sluice song with a serious title or overall tenor to take a detour that deflates the self-seriousness of the song.
E is for Earnest, which Morris’s music is, if conflictedly. Let’s face it, the singer-songwriter genre Sluice works in is inherently earnest. And even when Morris ironizes or digresses, which he often does, it serves to point out the distance between his minor joys and pains and the heroic ones of the past.
F is for Friends. More than romantic love, Morris sings about platonic love, so about friends. “New Leicester” is a direct tribute to a friend group attending a wedding, and references to bonds of amity run like a red thread through the music (e.g., see “Squirrel”).
G is for Guitar. Without showy runs or aggressive lead licks, Morris’s insouciant acoustic and electric playing always evokes a full atmosphere – it’s lovely, and low-key inventive.
H is for “Hard Times,” the recent Asheville-referencing Gillian Welch cover Sluice donated to Cardinals at the Window, the massive Hurricane Helene Benefit Compilation (note: not on Spotify so not on our mix).
I is for Instrumental. Full instrumentals like “Ostern” and long instrumental-only passages are delightful maunders, without the virtuoso flourishes or insistent attack often encountered on so-called “American Primitive” folk guitar albums. Morris’s instrumentals are about creating a mood.
J is for Justin Morris, naturally. Sluice head-honcho: raised in Winston-Salem, moved to New York, came back to Carolina via Durham.
K is for Kitsch. Southern artists are aware of stereotypes about Southern music – its myths of authenticity, its stock gestures, the expectation the rest of the world has for twang, tears, and Morris subverts these expectations, lovingly, by pointing out the kitsch-factor “Southerness” has taken on. “Elephant ears” from the State Fair, in their simultaneous sweetness and corniness, are perhaps Morris’s best metaphor for the commodification of folkways.
L is for Laid-back. “’Could you pass me a beer?’ / ‘Oh no it fell in the river’ / ‘Hey man, that’s alright’” – “New Leicester”
M is for Meta, as Morris’s music openly imitates, revises, and discusses songs and songwriting models of the past (see Q for Quotation).
N is for North Carolina. Sluice songs are filled with scenes from the Tarheel State: days spent summer swimming, weddings in Leicester, moments of social embarrassment at The Mothlight in Asheville.
O is for Oliver Child-Lanning, bass player for Sluice, uber-talented player in his own experimental outfit Weirs, and Fust.
P is for Past. Morris writes about the past, but without the usual sentimentality. A trail he walks is strewn with mill workers’ trash; when he paints a nostalgic scene from a childhood swimming lesson, Morris is quick to note that his nostalgia flees just as quickly as it rose up.
Q is for Quotation. Sluice’s music is filled with references: to things Morris’s friends have said, to books others have written, to songs others have sung. The effect is to humanize Morris as he plays everyman: he’s listening to and reading the same sort of stuff as everyone else.
R is for Rodenbough, Libby. The Mipso fiddler and scene staple – if you like an NC record with acoustic instruments, there’s a 50/50 chance Libby plays on it.
T is for Triad to Triangle, the path of Morris’s journey from one three-cornered region of NC to another.
U is for Understatement. Morris often uses it, leaving the listener to choose how seriously to interpret his words.
V is for Verse Chorus Verse, the traditional pop and rock song structure Morris mostly avoids in favor of spinning a yarn in song.
W is for Water. As Tasso Hartzog put it in an excellent article in The Independent: “Even when Morris isn’t singing about rivers, his songs follow their fluid logic. Each gentle word floats like a raft downstream, meandering through scenes that form little eddies in the flow of narrative time. “
X is for Xenial. X is always a toughie in an A-to-Z list, but “xenial” means friendly and it’s an apt descriptor for a music than never dips into the nihilistic mode.
Y is for “Y’all’ve.” A song title from Sluice’s first record, and a tribute to the simultaneously brilliant (why spell out “You all have” when you can just say “Y’all’ve”) yet faintly comic stylings of our Southern speech.
Z is for Zoology. Squirrel, a crow who stole an egg, eagle, lanky otter, unnamed animal “predators”: Morris is building quite a bestiary in song. Animals: some are cute, some are majestic, some are ungainly, just like the musical figures in Sluice.