The replay of John Moreland's network television debut is…glorious and affirming and a sucker punch. He is announced by Stephen Colbert, lights dissolve, and the camera slowly focuses on the person midway across the unadorned stage, revealing him beneath muted blue lights.
He is a big man. Seated, alone, cradling his acoustic guitar. He looks like nobody who is famous.
Then he begins to sing, to caress the 
song "Break My Heart Sweetly," and all that remains is to whisper, "Oh, my god."
In Colbert's studio everybody stood, like they were in church.
Big Bad Luv is the record John Moreland made after, after everything in his life changed. For the better.
He sings in one of those accents from flyover country that's impossible to locate and implausible to mimic. (Texas, by way of Northern Kentucky, but mostly Tulsa, as it happens.) He sings directly from his heart, with none of the restraint and filters and caution the rest of us would apply for public protection. He sings with resolute courage.
He sings.
