Murray Attaway Returns With Tense Music Plays — A Brilliant, Long-Awaited Tapestry of Tone and Truth

Photo Credit: Layla Attaway

More than three decades since his last solo effort, In Thrall, and years since the curtain fell on Guadalcanal Diary’s final set, Murray Attaway has returned — not with a whisper, but with a confident, exquisitely weathered voice. His new release, Tense Music Plays, is a poignant, fearless, and frequently electrifying reminder that true artistry doesn’t rust; it deepens.

Attaway, the enigmatic force behind Guadalcanal Diary — a band long hailed as one of the finest exports of the '80s Athens, Georgia music scene — has always written like a man with one foot in myth and the other in a Southern driveway. Tense Music Plays carries that signature blend of mysticism, biting wit, and heartfelt storytelling into new sonic territory while honouring the DNA of his past.

The album is dedicated to the late Jeff Walls, Attaway’s Guadalcanal co-founder and creative foil, whose absence is felt deeply here but whose spirit lingers in every ringing chord and sly lyric. In many ways, this is not just a new solo album — it’s a continuation of the story they started together.

With engineer Mark Williams at the helm (known for work with Southern Culture on the Skids, Joe Walsh, and others), Attaway has sculpted a sound that’s crisp, intimate, and unflinchingly authentic. He’s joined by drummer and bassist Robert Schmid (Swimming Pool Qs), whose raw precision grounds the record’s three standout rockers: "Breath," a meditative anthem about grief and emotional estrangement; "Hole in the Ground," a teeth-baring stomper about ego and illusion; and the shimmering, pulse-lifting "You Were There," a love letter and catharsis in equal measure. These tracks wouldn't feel out of place on a Guadalcanal record, but they shine here with an elder statesman's gravitas.

Elsewhere, Tense Music Plays reveals its quieter, more introspective magic. "Stars Behind the Moon" digs into the romanticism — and erasure — of Delta blues mythology, bolstered by a haunting violin performance from Ana Balka and a final verse that bursts out like a ghost kicking down a door. "Never Far Away" and "Stranger" are both solo pieces, intimate and stripped to their emotional core, the former wrestling with memory loss and the slow fade of a loved one, the latter aching with a sense of identity slipping through the cracks. "Better Days," co-written with Layla Attaway, is quietly stunning — a bittersweet nod to nostalgia, warmth, and the strange comfort of shared longing.

Then there’s “Old Christmas,” a wild, genre-hopping Appalachian-inspired tune born of folklore and cartoon chaos. What starts as a quirky detour swells into something oddly spiritual, even rebellious — like Tom Waits rummaging through a box of lost Rankin/Bass reels.

Throughout Tense Music Plays, Attaway proves he still views songwriting as both art and archaeology. There’s a sense of unhurried excavation in these tracks — a willingness to sit with an idea, turn it in the hand, chip away until only the essence remains. The album feels personal but not precious, polished but not preened. It’s the work of a songwriter who has lived enough life to know which stories matter — and how to tell them.

“It invariably ends up in my yard,” Attaway says of his music. That yard, as it turns out, is fertile ground. Full of strange blooms and soulful echoes, Tense Music Plays doesn’t just mark a return—it cements Attaway’s place as a singular voice in American music, still searching, still singing, and still capable of astonishing.

A welcome homecoming, and one of the year’s most quietly profound releases.

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