Gurf Morlix

Need a soundtrack to the coming apocalypse? Gurf Morlix has what you're looking for. The Soul & the Heal, his ninth album, finds the veteran Austin guitarist and singer-songwriter in a typically dark mood, yet also offers the occasional glimmer of hope and love. As in the past, he takes cues from his good friend Ray Wylie Hubbard. Morlix offers blues-based music with rattling percussion and snaking guitar licks, but his lyrics are deeper, sometimes chilling, and at other times reaffirming. Not until the album's last three songs do things really come into focus, however. "Quicksilver Kiss," sounding as close to his onetime collaborator Lucinda Williams as he's ever done, positively gleams with optimism. He follows it up with a roughed-up ode to "My Chainsaw" and ends with "The Best We Can," an acoustic prayer to the humanity in all of us.