Archive Review: Elliott Murphy’s Unreal City (1993)

This was released several months ago, the return of singer/songwriter Elliott Murphy to these shores, and it’s been growing on me, nagging me to review it ever since I got it. It keeps returning to the CD player, each new spin offering some new insight or phrase that I missed the first time out. Murphy lives up to every claim ever made for him as a songwriter, an artist so poetically gifted that he throws away lines that lesser writers would base entire works on.

In the way of background, after a handful of under-hyped, under-appreciated late ‘70s/early ‘80s albums, which earned massive amounts of critical acclaim heaped upon near-total commercial failure, Murphy split to find some respect and mystery in Europe. Unreal City is a diary, of sorts, of the past decade’s adventures. Each song on Unreal City tells a story, presenting a lyrical postcard of a place, a memory, an emotion...

An artist in paradise, Murphy is following the trail of such literary greats as Fitzgerald or Hemingway. He remains unsure of himself, however, as on “Destiny,” when he sings “thought I was a romantic/when I crossed the Atlantic/ but that didn’t change the tide/but that’s a different story/in the search for love and glory/there’s no place left to hide...” Much of the album possesses a dark shadow to it, with lonliness and mortality often explored. On the haunting “On Elvis Presley’s Birthday,” Murphy remembers his childhood, his late father, and uses Elvis as an icon of both, singing “driving in his Cadillac/it was Elvis Presley’s birthday/they said it on the radio/my father liked Elvis and it was wonderful.” The song sadly ends, though, with the verse, “this is an unreal city/you can be anybody you want to be/when you’re alone.” It speaks to the memories which fuel the dreamer in each of us.

Through all of the travels presented on Unreal City, the joy and the tears, the acute observations on love and life, it is the birth of his son in Paris, inspiring the writing of the album’s closer, “Let It Rain,” which brings this sojourn full-circle. “Ever since I was a child,” begins Elliott, “my manner described as mild/it was always too late to estimate/the force of the hurricane blowing in my head.” He ends this opus of faith renewed, and, indeed, the album’s story, by denying the fates their victory. In joy he sings, “I believe in love/I believe in birth/I believe in giving something back to the earth...so let it rain.” It is as powerful an affirmation of life as has been written, by one of the rock genre’s most talented yet unknown artists. (Razor & Tie Music, released 1993) 

Originally published by R.A.D! zine, October 1993

Also on That Devil Music: Elliott Murphy’s Notes From the Underground CD review