Melbourne’s Good Morning On Running the Mill on White Boy Sadness

Written by Emily Fender

Photographed by Rachel Cabitt

“We’ve run the mill on how to express white boy sadness” Stefan jokes. A duo from Melbourne, Stefan Blair and Liam Parsons have been working on music together since they met in high school about ten years ago, the focus of their collaboration being Good Morning. Their sound is well within a low-fi indie acoustic genre that can be a breeding ground for sad white boy music, but their latest albums are filled with a characteristic warmth and honesty that is quickly and quite damningly lacking from so many others. 

We talk in Cooper Square between sound checks for their show, just out of the sun while sitting at the metal tables. Good Morning’s debut North American tour comes after many years of exploring their sound together and releasing five albums under the project. Their journey has created something of an arc: starting very indie, fresh out of high school, to later on being picked up by a label, which resulted in a grueling studio album process that proved a poor fit for them, and then landing back here with a much looser process. The middle chapter of their journey where they got a taste of what it means to work in a studio on an album hasn’t exactly been their favorite part. Stefan explained that their first studio album Prize // Reward took three years, and that “it was really fucking sort of horrid to make, it wasn’t a good experience.” This proved quite the crucible for them and what quickly followed was a much more relatively off the cuff and generative recording process: they released The Option in April of 2019 and then Basketball Breakups only six months later in early October, along with releasing between those two, a set of two gorgeous singles unattached to the albums. Stefan explains that “the reason for two quick ones after that was probably ‘cause we wanted to do some quick things, learn to enjoy it again”, “the complete opposite” Liam chimes in.

Loosening up has certainly been helpful with their music and also their dynamic. They seem to be thoroughly enjoying their time on tour, guided along the way by Grey’s Anatomy DVDs and giving away X-Box games during sets. As we chat they seem entirely content with their lot and laughingly describe how they end up acclimatized to “feeling a bit average” because of tour while still having a blast. Along the way they are certainly getting a warm welcome and selling out in advance in multiple cities, along with very enthusiastic audiences surprising them by moshing to songs like “You Up?” and singing the lyrics right back at them during their sets. Despite feeling a bit detached from the older material, Liam explains that “it kind of doesn’t even really mean anything to me anymore but it’s fucking crazy that people seem to have some sort of attachment to it, so it’s more for them at this point.”

They talk about how people have come up to them after sets to explain how important Good Morning’s music has been to them. To stop and think about how incredibly wonderful it is to be having such a direct connection to people halfway around the world via their music, Stefan states that the crowd response has been really touching. “Putting yourself out there, you’d hope that other people can relate to that same feeling as well.” Liam adds, “it’s been pretty bizarre to roll into Salt Lake City on a Tuesday night and there’s like a room full of people—just strange!” There’s an odd uncertainty about touring today, having all of these numbers of monthly listeners and other data accumulating on streaming platforms but knowing that it is inevitably a completely different ball game on the road. Fortunately for them, Good Morning has certainly received quite the warm affirmation by the consistent and energetic turnout all along the way.

And yet back home they settle into a different speed, and they are quick to add that the Melbourne community is very fittingly laid back in an enjoyably aloof way. Although Good Morning has primarily been Liam and Stefan, they emphasize that back home they really benefit from a very porous music community that ebbs and flows in terms of collaboration where everyone seems to naturally rotate around working together. Because of this they can easily maintain a nice, dynamic rhythm to their year. Liam explains, “it’s also a good way to keep [creative momentum going] if you don’t feel in the mood to be writing or if you don’t have the inspiration. It’s a good use of that energy and a good way to keep going.”

Their relationship is no exception, as Liam remarks, “[we] place more importance in our friendship than in the band at the end of the day.” Although Stefan clarifies they’ve grown out of being limited to this friendship, noting that “we’ve extended out to writing about more of the world around us than this little insular thing we have going on,” they both agree that their friendship has proved very important for the project. 

Both in their relationship and in the Melbourne community, the two friends have found a very organic pattern in their music that humanizes and warms their work. This is not a duo that takes themselves too seriously and they have no interest in maintaining some sort of distant persona. For context, their Instagram bio is “band band woo yeah” and their Spotify bio lists their astrological signs, while their music videos feature Japanese stuffed animals posed with instruments, Liam at IKEA, and a hilarious spoof of an Arctic Monkeys music video. They also mention at one point revising a press release that in an early draft detailed their shoutouts from musicians like Tyler, The Creator and A$AP Rocky. Liam explains, “I was like oh we gotta cut this shit out of there it’s a bit cringe-y.” But in what again reveals their mellow attitudes, they say that of course it’s awesome to have these moments with musicians but “it’s no more important than other fans connecting with the music at the end of the day.” That connection and the energy shared between everyone at shows, and in equal parts the relaxed and dynamic writing and recording process they’ve found, all of this seems to be what keeps them going instead of trying to make it big. It is easy to tell that at the heart of this project is a love for music and their community and they’re just two friends completely stoked that they can make a living doing it.

Liam adds that their music is like an “emotional hobby”—“at one point I think we just realized that both of us liked writing songs and there’s no expectation beyond that, you know to be in a band or whatever.” With this apparently comes a healthy amount of goofiness as they pack up and head to a new city almost every night with an easygoing happiness that is easily seen in their music as Liam sings “I cashed my ticket, and I made my millions. Spent it on nothing, no better feeling” in their song “Garden.”

And yet, as healing and enjoyable as it seems to be for them, their home life in Melbourne also provides them with the much-needed space to sink back into themselves after the up-tempo and socially non-stop process that recording Basketball Breakups and then hurdling through the U.S. has been: “We wanted to work with people [after Prize // Reward], get out of our heads for a little while, but now I think we want to go back” Liam says with a quick laugh at the end. The cycle of touring and hometown hibernation seems to be as natural as the seasons for these two, and with the end of each seems to come the content assurance that they’ll wander down this path again soon.

Keep up with Good Morning.