Michael Terrance
Depending on how you read it, Underneath Everything—the title of the debut record from Halifax’s Michael Terrance AKA Michael Murphy —could mean very different things. Through one lens, it suggests a crushing, suffocating pressure: being stuck underneath everything. Through another, though, it could read like an invitation: to look closer, to scratch the surface and dig, to find what’s underneath everything. For Murphy, the point isn’t to pick one or the other. The point is that, like so many things in life, we’re not allowed to pick. We have to live with the reality that two things, which seem to contradict one another, can in fact be true.
The title comes from the opening track “Good Money,” a throbbing, exultant alt-rock stomp that satirizes the things we choose to do—or are forced to do—to make money and survive. It’s bright and bursting with energy, but rippling with dread, too. “‘Oh, but the money is good!’/Is it worth everything you pay for it?” Murphy calls on the chorus.
“We say things like, ‘Well, it’s fine because the money is good,’” says Murphy. “In a way it speaks to the broader feeling of forces beyond our control, and how they wear you down as a person, how we get trapped in a relationship with something like money.”
This is the heart of Underneath Everything: the sunny sensory experience and the darkness often lurking beneath. “The songs, in some way, have a feeling of menace lurking in the background, but the focus isn’t on the negative energy,” says Murphy. “It’s about relationships and connections.”
The record’s artwork reflects this duality, with a spread of vaguely-eerie, nearly featureless figures rendered in light colours on a sharp red background. Murphy’s daughter drew the initial body, and Murphy passed it along to friend and artist Jud Haynes, who built on the image to explore the themes of Underneath Everything.
Some songs for Underneath Everything were written in 2020, but others were up to five years in the making. Murphy reshaped them over the past year to fit together on the record, then recorded demos in his basement before sending them to his brother Paul Murphy (Wintersleep, Postdata), who produced, played, and sang on the record. Once the Murphys’ parts were in place, they went into Golden Palms in Halifax with drummer Jordan Murphy (Walrus), who tracked all the drums in one evening. Michael Fong mixed the record, and Noah Mintz mastered it.
-Luke Ottenhof