Kevin Morby is the heart of the heartland.

His recently released eighth solo album, Little Wide Open, is said to complete an “unintentional trilogy” (per a press release) about his vision of the Midwest — for the past decade, he’s once again been a resident of Kansas City. (The other albums in the trilogy are Sundowner and This Is a Photograph.)

Little Wide Open, produced by The National’s Aaron Dessner and featuring Bon Iver, Lucinda Williams and many more, finds Morby at his most accessible and forthright, with some of his finest songs to date (“Cowtown,” “Bible Belt,” “Dandelion”). Best of them all is “100,000,” an epic road trip through the forgotten towns and endless roads of the Midwest.

According to Morby’s Substack, his aim “was to have the feeling of being in a car on a highway that’s gradually gaining speed, going faster and faster, until it flies off a cliff.” The track builds from humble beginnings toward an epic finale, accelerating through vivid snapshots of the region. It reminds me a little of Harmony Korine’s tales from Xenia, Ohio, in Gummo, populated by “pretty girls / pretty sisters / twirling batons / blowing penny whistles” and “ugly boys / ugly brothers / die for your country / or one another / muscle cars / in the front yard / Master of Puppets / and Kill ’Em All.” As Morby continues rolling down the road, he zooms out on “100,000 people / 100,000 lives / 100,000 teardrops / right behind their eyes / 100,000 corpses / all sleeping in their beds.”

For Lubbock, Texas-born Morby, this is not just about being an outsider looking in. This is his homeland. He writes, “I like to walk the desolate mainstrips and sit at bars and people watch and go on runs through the quiet neighborhoods that almost always stereotypically end up running alongside some train tracks. Salina, Kansas, Odessa and Amarillo, Texas, Jonesboro, Arkansas, etc. God bless you all. The glue that binds this crazy fucked up country together.”

Kevin Morby might envision the song flying off a cliff, but to my ears he’s soaring into the great wide open.