Waylon Jennings

Everyone is Included when We Sing “This Land Is Your Land”

This blog was named after the Stephen Foster 1854 American folk song, “Hard Times Come Again No More“:

Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh! Hard times come again no more.
‘Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh! Hard times come again no more.

The song doesn’t pray for no more hard times just for Christians, or just for Americans. It is a universal lament that every one of God’s children has felt during one dark time or another. Can’t we hear these words coming from the mouths of today’s victims of terrorism? From those Syrians who are persecuted, Muslim and Christian alike, by Daesh/ISIS and are now fleeing to our shores as refugees, crying out for a land of religious freedom like the English pilgrims before them?

Via @PastorDan

I try to be a man of deep faith, and have certainly led a very political life, but I generally try to keep those things off of this blog. If justice is my calling and my career, then music is my passion and my hobby. I like to keep those two worlds separate so that the music can reach as wide an audience as possible for its own sake.

I can’t do that today. This is too important. Part of “Americana” music is “America” – and all the values that that word claims to stand for. Values like love, justice, compassion, and hospitality. America should not and can not stand for hatred, bigotry, nationalism, or rejection. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” These are the values we have always sung about, and what we must keep singing. What do we want America to be is a question that all of us answer every minute of every day, and need to talk about in every space, even music blogs. So I write today as an American, as a Christian, and also, later in this post, as a music fan, so if you only came for the music, please press on (or scroll down).

Donald Trump said this week that Muslims in the U.S. “absolutely” have to register in a database, and that we need more than just databases to manage them. He did not argue with comparisons to Third Reich Germany requiring its Jewish citizens to wear identifying symbols and tattoos. His bigoted broadside against religious freedom comes on the heels of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz’s comments that America should allow Christian refugees, but not Muslim refugees – never mind that Daesh/ISIS’s primary victims are its fellow Muslims.

Jesus calls me to love everyone. Everyone means everyone, but especially Muslims, my brothers and sisters in the God of Abraham. These brothers and sisters face far too much violence – abroad from ISIS, at home from bigotry – leaving them bleeding at the side of the road. Jesus says I need to love my neighbor, to think of everyone as my neighbor, and to help the person bleeding by the side of the road. He used a Samaritan as the example, because Jews in 30 AD looked at Samaritans the same way Trump, Cruz, and Bush look at Muslims today. But, Jesus said, that’s not what matters.

I love what the Rev. Daniel “@PastorDan” Schultz wrote on Twitter this week about the refugees:

“You want to witness to the gifts of Christ? This is how you do it. You care for the poor, the powerless, the strangers. Yes, even though there’s some risk. *Because* there is some risk. Because to be a Christian is to open ourselves to vulnerability, in imitation of Christ who made himself vulnerable to us.”

The photographer, Osman Sagirli, said the little Syrian girl thought his camera was a gun, so she put her hands up as her mother had taught her.

Trump has led the presidential primary polls for months. Cruz has shown he has the influence to shut down the federal government, and Bush is the son and brother of two past U.S. presidents. These men matter, a great deal. Don’t think that the history books won’t record their hatred and ignorance, or that the rest of the world isn’t taking notice now – and don’t think that those historians and global neighbors won’t also attribute that hatred and ignorance to us if we are not seen speaking out, loudly and vehemently. American Muslim citizens are also noticing, and we need to let them know that we stand by them. They need to feel that they are not alone or endangered during this dark time. If we don’t light a candle in the darkness, who will?

It is especially important for us country and Americana fans to speak out. The country music world is overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) white and Christian. Americana may not be quite as heavily Christian, but it is also a very white genre. We are the ones who are most likely to support politicians like Trump, Cruz, and Bush. We are the ones being defined by their words. We are also the ones with the most ability to become good neighbors to all of our brothers and sisters. But just as our actions can be powerful, so is our inaction – we are the ones who can leave our Muslim friends feeling abandoned, ignored, and threatened. We need to choose action over inaction, and stand with them in love.

Let’s also remember that there is a long, rich musical tradition of singing out our values of compassion, love, and justice, especially in Americana, country, and folk. It wasn’t just Foster. Woody Guthrie wrote the dust bowl ballads about struggling farmers and migrant workers. Pete Seeger sang about unions and fair wages. So much of roots music was shaped by slave spirituals, praising God and yearning for that most precious human right, freedom. After 9/11, many country stars emphasized the importance of standing together. And folk music was home to hundreds of civil rights and Vietnam War protest songs. (Many ask where today’s protest songs are. They still exist, but they’re not folk anymore – they are hip hop. But in a way, if folk music is the lyrical voice of a people, isn’t hip hop the folk music of certain urban landscapes? I digress.)

Returning to the issue at hand, America is “one nation, under God” and “e pluribus unum” – out of many, one. We do not treat Muslims differently than Christians. We are one people. And it’s not just a slogan – it’s the law. As our First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” And earlier, in Article VI, paragraph 3, we read, “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Rejecting people of a faith different than our own could not be more un-American. If we do not stand for religious freedom for all, we do not stand for religious freedom at all, and we do not sing our country songs of praise with pure or honest hearts.

I cried for 15 minutes when I saw this picture of little Aylan Kurdi in September, just three years old. Photographer Nilufer Demir of the Dogan News Agency said her “blood froze.”

We have made these mistakes before. At the same time that Hitler was requiring the Jews to register, we were turning them away, refusing to let in refugees because we were afraid that German spies would hide among their ranks. One of the would-be refugees denied entry was Anne Frank herself. We have made these mistakes before. We cannot make them again.

And it’s easy to love Muslims. Like George W. Bush told us, Islam is a religion of peace. Yes, it has its violent Scriptures, but so does Christianity. Terrorists are to Islam what the KKK, Westboro Baptists, or Irish wars are to Christianity. But even if this were not true, we are also called to love our enemies.

I don’t have to choose values-based arguments – there is definitely a practical side to this issue. I could argue, and have elsewhere, that turning away refugees is exactly what ISIS wants us to do (and they’ve said so in their propaganda to one another). I could argue in favor of the rigorous 18-month vetting process that refugees face. I could point to the overwhelmingly positive statistics that show refugees simply don’t commit terrorism here. I could talk about how it doesn’t make sense for a terrorist to come as a refugee – there are faster, easier ways to strike.

But values are what matter most. We show who we are when times are hard, not when they’re easy. This is when it’s most important to stand by the values we proclaim, and not shrink like cowards in the face of fear. I think Joe Biden put it wonderfully yesterday in an off-the-cuff answer to a reporter’s question:

“One way to make sure that the terrorists win is for us to begin to change our value system. That’s number one. Number two, we have a real vetting system for refugees coming into the country. We can assure Americans that they will be safe. For us to turn our back now, for us to turn our back now on refugees is turning our back on who we are. The only way terror wins is if they cause you to change your value system. ISIS is no existential threat to the United States of America – simply stated, they are not. And we are going to be working as hard as we can to open our arms to refugees.”

Shame on every member of the U.S. House of Representatives, both Republican and Democrat, who voted against American values of compassion, hospitality, and justice yesterday – and shame on every one of us who stands idly by without saying a word. Please, look up how your member voted here, then call Congress and ask for your representative at (202) 224-3121 to either thank or chastise them. And because this conversation needs to be loud and public, please share posts like this one, and also this one from the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the one from above by Pastor Dan, this one, and this one on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, or whatever else you use. It won’t be easy – you might have friends or family who fight you for it. But that’s why it matters. That’s where love needs to be planted most.

“For the Lord your God is god… who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 10:18–19

“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Matthew 25:35

Eric Church Praises the False God of Homogenization Once Again

I wouldn’t call myself an Eric Church fan. I don’t change the station when his music comes on. Most of his stuff is middling, but every now and then he does a great song. It’s more rock than country, but at least it’s closer to rock than it is pop or rap, unlike most of of today’s radio. And since Church only puts an album out every three years and wrote 120+ songs for the new one, I do believe he’s in it for the music. Best yet, in the cover article for this week’s country issue of Rolling Stone, he praises Kacey Musgraves, rightly says “Brandy Clark should be the face of the genre,” and criticizes laundry-list bro-country as “shallow”. Bravo!

But on the giant other hand, Church is an arrogant jerk who glorifies and encourages violence, hypocritically performs with and thus enables some of the very acts he calls “shallow,” and insists he’s an “outsider” despite his industry awards, giant label, and huge sales. That’s either the biggest case of self-delusion the world has seen since Harold Camping, or just pure marketing crapola.

But my real issue is that Eric Church doesn’t respect country music or even understand what real country music is – to the point that he says that, like Santa or the Tooth Fairy, it doesn’t exist. From the RS story:

You can’t really put Bruce [Springsteen] in a box – what kind of music does Bruce do?” says Church. “It could be country. If he came out right now? No doubt, that’s where he’d live.”

Church’s music, on the other hand, could easily have been considered rock in the Eighties and Nineties… “True red-white-blue American rock & roll fans have gone more toward country. Hip-hop has gone down. Rocks’ down. People are kidding themselves if they think there’s a bigger format than country.”

“What kind of music does Springsteen do”? What a stupid question! ROCK! The answer is ROCK! Right in the middle of his own show, he’ll proclaim the concert “a rock and roll exorcism!”

Then Church says that “country” is now the biggest genre. Well, yeah, and if you want to change Alaska’s name to “Alabama,” then we could call Alabama the biggest state in the country. Which is exactly what Church is doing when he says “Born to Run” is rock if it’s the ’80s but country if its the 2010s. NO! It’s the same recording in any time, so it’s the same genre in any time! Nor is the country audience truly growing – the labels and radio conglomerates are just appealing to various portions of the pop, rock, rap, and country lite crowds all at once. It’s a bigger audience than country has, sure – the same way New York has a bigger population than Chicago. Moving from one to the other didn’t mean the city grew; you changed cities!

This “country” format Church says is so big is NOT country. It’s rap, pop, and rock thrown into a blender with a dash of banjo to mask the lack of twang and story. Simply calling it “country” is not enough to make it country.

But Church disagrees – he seems pretty adamant that rock and country are now the same thing. Last year, he told ABC, “Genres are dead. There’s good music. There’s bad music. And I think the cool thing about Nashville is it is at the epicenter of that kind of thinking.” An odd quote for a guy who says Brandy Clark should be the face of the “genre” – and complete horse hockey. To say there’s nothing more to it than bad vs. good music is to demand that we all have the same taste, to declare that if you like country then you’d damn well better like pop and rap, too, because you’re not allowed to have one without the other anymore.

This homogenization is a terrible thing. It is the true straitjacket on country innovation, and it is an attack on the diversity of fans’ tastes.

I know that a lot of people hate “labels.” They feel like you’re putting them in a box and taking away their individuality, especially in music – plenty of artists claim their music transcends genres and labels.

I understand and respect genre hopping. I do. But I also think labels can be a good thing. If I ask for chicken for dinner, don’t tell me, “There’s good food and there’s bad food, pull something out of the good bad!” No, dammit, this bag is labeled “Cheetos” and that bag “chicken” for a reason. Neither iTunes nor the last few record stores actually remaining are going to merge everything into two sections called “Good Music” and “Bad Music,” and it would be too overwhelming to have just one section alphabetizing EVERYthing. Broad labels are not a bad thing – they help us narrow things down, and give our searches somewhere to start.

Switching gears just a little bit, the RS article goes on to quote publisher Arthur Buenahora saying, “With Eric, we don’t need fuckin’ twin fiddles” – as if fiddles are a bad thing! Sure, you don’t NEED them to do country, but why is that supposed to be a laudatory goal rather than just something different?

The same giant, fiddle-appreciating audience that existed for George Strait in the ’80s, Alan Jackson in the ’90s, and Brad Paisley in the ’00s still exists today. It was only four years ago that Easton Corbin had back-to-back #1 hits! No, that audience’s taste hasn’t changed; it’s just that the music industry is ignoring that audience for a new one. It’s not about the music — it’s about the greed, the money, the bigger and bigger profits. So the next time Church defends homogenization, he should think about where that homogenization is coming from, and remember his own quote, “Once your career becomes about something other than the music, then that’s what it is. I’ll never make that mistake.”

An album that truly deserves the 2,926-word review: Sturgill Simpson’s “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music”

(If you must, you can skip to my actual rating and summary at the end of this post, but whatever you do, buy this album – buy it now. And remember, it’s independently produced, so you’re not giving your money to a rich fat label.)

Yesterday, two weeks after his second solo, independent album debuted at #11 on the Billboard country charts, a Rolling Stone Country headline asked, “Is Sturgill Simpson Country Music’s Savior?”

I wouldn’t use the word savior. Country radio could use a savior, but there’s lots good in country music that doesn’t need saving. That said, I did write last week that what country needs is not a new George Strait but a new Willie Nelson, and that maybe Sturgill would fill that role. That is, someone who can unite the many roots subgenres, create a movement, and eventually push it into the mainstream.

Trigger over at Saving Country Music, who does call for a “savior,” throws some cool water on all that for now. He loves Simpson – his 2013 co-artist of the year – as much as I do, but cautions against the danger of high expectations:

In the long run, for an artist like Sturgill to reach the CMA level, a lot of specific watermarks must be reached, and it’s imperative on his fans, and Sturgill himself, not to set unrealistic expectations that can end up deflating the positive momentum he’s created… Sturgill Simpson is purely country. This means hypothetically that the sky is the limit, unlike with Americana. But the CMA, and especially the ACM are set up to promote the country music industry… Sturgill Simpson isn’t part of that industry.

L-rR Drew Ball of the Riverbreaks, Sturgill Simpson, and the writer, Nathan Empsall, in November 2013.

L-R Drew Ball of the Riverbreaks, Sturgill Simpson, and the writer, Nathan Empsall, in November 2013.

Fair enough. All that said, in every interview Sturgill gives, he seems to be filled with humility and focused more on his own identity, mission, and family than on professional success. “I’m not pursuing a mainstream career,” he told Billboard, “so I feel that I have the freedom to make the kind of records I want to. That’s a good feeling.” To CMT: “I could go back to the railroad. I liked that job.” And to NPR, “To be cliché and incredibly trite about it, I wanna make art… There was a big part of me that wondered maybe if this would be the end of my career. But you can’t worry about those things… A commercial path isn’t something I’m at all interested in pursuing.” And pretty definitively to Rolling Stone:

A lot of journalists, it feels like they want to lure me into being the poster boy, and talk shit about modern country, and I just don’t have anything to really offer there. Because, fortunately, I’ve never pursued that side of the industry, which means I never had the opportunity to be screwed over or have any of these horror stories that you hear about. So for me to sit and talk about that stuff would be insulting to people who have, and extremely naïve… I don’t know where I fit in, but I do know that when I figure it out, it ain’t going to be because somebody else did it for me.

Ok, ok. Let’s give the man some respect, and turn to the music itself.

An Album Review: Metamodern Sounds in Country Music

This is not one of the greatest country albums of ALL time, but it is one of the greatest country albums in a long time.

Sturgill’s previous album, High Metamodern Sounds in Country Music Top Mountain, had an outlaw sound and a big focus on heartache and life’s struggles. Metamodern is no repeat. It generally keeps a similar sound despite a new band, but the lyrical heartache is mostly replaced with… well, with just about everything else, from black coffee to Buddha and reptile aliens, all of it driving at a bigger point about using love and compassion to get through life.

Sturgill says the album’s biggest influences were 80% his past experiences but also “The Phenomenon of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and an essay that Emerson wrote called Nature… and then another book by Dr. Rick Strassman called The Spirit Molecule.” Or as he told NPR, it’s his “hobbyist interests… [in] the disguise of a traditional modern country record.” The liner notes also thank Stephen Hawking, Aldous Huxley, and Carl Sagan, and I think that last one’s especially cool because my birthday gift to myself this year was Sagan’s original “Cosmos” on DVD.

And yet, it stays country the whole time, both in its sound – traditional country – and its message, one of love and finding your way in the world. Astrophysics aside, Sturgill, who’s expecting his first child, says the album’s main point is really just the saving power of love for one another – and it shows. “Anytime I ever have met someone that was very angry or full of negativity, nine times out of ten if you really take a good look at that person’s life, there’s probably not a whole lot of love going on there.” Damn straight.

Before going track by track, I will say this: With Metamodern, Sturgill Simpson manages to simultaneously experiment AND keep sight of his roots. Eric Church, Luke Bryan, Jerrod Niemann, and the stations that play them should take notes. Bro-country, EDM, and pop stars like Church defend their music by saying stuff like, “If we’re making the same music as Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, why not just listen to that? They didn’t do the music before them, they completely changed.” Well, no, the outlaws didn’t COMPLETELY change – they were experimental, yes, but they kept to their roots. The whole point was to remind Nashville of steel guitars, fiddles, and personal stories, and push back against the era’s poppy homogenization. The problem with the music Church and his crowd are creating is that they “experiment” by merging genres, completely losing sight of their roots.

Sturgill shows them all how country experimentation is done. Let’s take it track by track.

1. Turtles All The Way Down

Metamodern’s opening track has gotten a lot of attention, and for good reason. How many other country songs can you think of that are named for Hindu theology or a Stephen Hawking quote? “Turtles All the Way Down” has the most interesting blend of metaphysical, cosmic, and psychadelic lyrics you may ever hear in country music, with the bottom line that for all the fancy religious theories out there, simple love is the most powerful. The first words on the album are “I’ve seen Jesus play with flames in a lake of fire,” and soon after comes the now-famous line “There’s a gateway in our minds that leads somewhere out there far beyond this plane // where reptile alien made of light cut you open and pull out all your pain.”

But really, this song isn’t about cosmology, and it’s not about space aliens, either. That line is just a spacey way of talking about relief, about having our pain taken away. And what is that takes it away? “Marijuana, LSD, Psilocybin, and DMT, they all changed the way I see // But love’s the only thing that ever saved my life.”

I actually don’t appreciate the swipes Sturgill takes at faith. Yes, belief and religion have caused a lot of pain an destruction, there’s no doubt about that. But let’s not mix up Christ for the Christians – faith can also be the source of the very love Sturgill sings about and encourages us to seek. Like retired Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, known to most for being the gay bishop but he’s much more than that, says, “Show me the God you don’t believe in – I probably don’t believe in him either.” In fact, when no other person is around to love us, God’s love is still there. And that’s all I’ll say about that, because the underlying message of love is still spot-on.

2. Life of Sin, 3. Living the Dream

Track two, “Life of Sin,” pats us on the back for getting through Turtles. It’s much more what you’d expect from a stereotypical old country album, singing about how his songs come from a heartbreak and drinking himself silly. Next up is “Living the Dream,” the album’s first single. This one’s a bit more convuluted in its metaphysical meaning. I could pontificate but it would sound more like disagreement then reflection if I put it in writing – which is to say, I did put it in writing, but cut it in the editing. Better to just quote the NPR interview again: “I’m learning the less I talk about it, the more opportunity I leave for people to form their own interpretation. ”

4. Voices, 5. Long White Line

“Voices” might have the most poetic lyrics on the whole album. Sturgill writes about the voices pressing in on him, how they’re singing about society’s depression – “the rivers are crying but the oceans cannot speak.” He wishes they’d go away but they never will, and it’s not a sign of the end times because they’ve always been there. Yeah, this sounds like something an Appalachian man would know and should write. Next is “Long White Line,” which like Life of Sin after Turtles, pulls it back to traditional country themes, allowing us to towel off after such a deep dive – his girl’s gone, so he’s hitting the open road. The guitar’s rhythm is something right out of a Cash or Willie album, too.

6. The Promise

The album’s back half then begins with a cover of When In Rome’s “The Promise” from 1988, which starts as the slowest love song of either of Sturgill’s albums, but opens up to a little bit of very effective and appropriate Waylon-esque wailing toward the end. The lyrics, some of the very few that aren’t original, are a beautiful promise to always be there, to be supportive. I don’t care for new wave music but in Sturgill’s style, I see that I love this song. I will offer a slight negative note about the instrumentation though – the mellotron is just a little too sappy. The lyrics really hold their own on this one with the way Sturgill sings them, no need to try and make it more romantic.

7. A Little Light

On “A Little Light,” Sturgill’s vocals are more reminiscent of Randy Travis’s Gospel stint or even George Jones than of the usual Waylon comparisons. It has the feel of a a Gospel song, but the lyrics are a bit broader than just Christianity. Sturgill sings about walking the road to Heaven, but says all you need to get there isn’t a compass or a map but a little light inside you. It’s about love and light within, and I dig it.

8. Just Let Go

I love the first line of “Just Let Go”: “Woke up today and decided to kill my ego // It ain’t ever done me no good no how.” And this line, oh this line: “You have to let go so the soul can fall.” It’s true, like pastor and author Rob Bell says, if your hands are too full of the good, there’s no room left for the great, you gotta set it down. And the uplifting melody and high notes really fit the words. I might have toned down the slide guitar though – oddly enough, it reminded me a little too much of the Finding Forrester soundtrack, which I dig, but in a very different way. That music is more searching, whereas the overarching feeling here is almost like taking a divine bath in God’s refreshing and hydrating light, feeling the relief and love it brings.

9. It Ain’t All Flowers

Then we get to “It Ain’t All Flowers,” and this is where I go, “What the F***?” Lyrically, like so much else, it’s great. It’s about searching the corners of one’s own mind to figure stuff out. Sturgill alternates between howling and almost growling. It works well. But then they play the song backwards, and it switches from dark, psychedelic country — but still country — to something more urban, almost funk with a spooky edge.

I don’t like it, because it’s not me. And that’s completely okay, because this one isn’t supposed to be me. It’s supposed to be Sturgill. If you want to respect a song about plumbing the depths of one’s own mind, then you have to let the writer go wherever that takes him or you’re a hypocrite. And like Sturgill told NPR, this one “stands to represent my own introspective journey I’ve taken over the last few years.” I also like part of his goal here – the means were cool regardless of the ends: “Dave [Cobb, producer and engineer] had the idea: Instead of bringing in synthesizers, why don’t we just attempt to try to recreate some of [popular modern electronica] sounds using analog equipment? Which sounded amazingly fun and challenging, so we were all for it.”

10. Panbowl

We close with the hidden “bonus” tenth track, “Panbowl.” For the third time, Sturgill tells us, “Wow, alright, took you down a pretty weird path there, didn’t I? Here, let’s have a rest together.” It’s acoustic country influenced by his previous bluegrass career. It’s also a more relaxing song, opening with happy guitar chords. The subject is nostalgia for his Kentucky childhood, and love for his family. That kind of specific love and the stories that back it up are a natural conclusion to the rest of the album’s lyrics, and the acoustic sound helps balance things out. It really is the perfect end to the album.

No matter how weird this album gets, and even without a fiddle, it’s still a country album. This is an album with slide guitars about life, and what else is true country music ever about, really? Whether it’s complex, twisted, and psychological or just simple and emotional, laying your soul bare is still laying your soul bare. Pain is pain and the need for love is the same, no matter how it was we came to see it.

And this is why I say that Sturgill might, just might, be our next Willie Nelson. Metamodern’s foundational sound is what traditional and outlaw country fans look for. It’s experimental and electric enough that Americana and alt-country fans can dig it. Throw in just a few more lighter notes or acoustic sound on even just one track, and you may not appeal to the Lumineers’ indie folk crowd but it won’t keep them away anymore, either. We’ll see what fans do with Sturgill’s stuff over the next few years, but he certainly has the right kind of appeal to be the Willie-esque uniter that roots music needs to punch back against hick-hop.

I’d worry that saying stuff like that puts too much pressure on Sturgill from fans, except for two reasons. First, his last album said, “Life ain’t fair and the world is mean.” Second, maybe he’s not our Willie Nelson. Maybe he’s our Jackie Robinson – like Branch Rickey saw in Robinson, you’re not necessarily the best at the game, but you’re the best at taking the pressure. Like Sturgill told Billboard, “If it’s all good and it’s smoke being blown up your ass, and you start investing faith in it all, that’s a good way for you to set yourself up for a long hard fall. We’re just trying to keep moving forward.”

The Takeaway

4.5 whiskey bottles out of 5. I actually originally gave it five out of five for the first 8 hours this post was up, and should probably just leave it there, but something is holding me back. Objectively, this is a much better record than High Top Mountain, which I gave a 5. It’s absolutely a work of creative genius. And like I say, except for “It Ain’t All Flowers” (which I still respect), I love the sound. Sturgill hits the perfect spot of balancing experimentation with his roots. It’s also a big break from the subject material of his first album, showing great range and talent. Making this took a lot of bravery.

But personally, I prefer HTM, just out of personal taste, and feel like my ratings should reflect that. I also feel like something is dampening the sound. Trigger at Saving Country Music said it’s the recording hiss. Maybe. I think it also needs just a little more acoustic instrumentation, maybe some light fiddle, to open up the sound a bit – perhaps in place of the mellotron on The Promise. Not much, just a touch.

Finally, it’s exhausting. The tricks, the nuances, the metaphysics – it really makes you pause and think. You just can’t be neutral about this stuff. In fact, it reminds me a teeny bit of the debut of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Today the Fifth is seen as an innovative masterpiece, but at the time, there was so much new in it that Beethoven’s audience was just confused. I dig this album, and its message of love is spot-on, but it wipes me out – as any country exploration of the soul should.

So yeah, 4.5, maybe even all 5, whiskey bottles out of 5, but also with the hangover that that much whiskey brings.

Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, like Sturgill’s previous record, was recorded in Nashville and produced by Dave Cobb. Except for Cobb, though, the band is all new: Laur Joamets on guitar, Kevin Black on bass, Miles Miller on percussion & backing vocals, Mike Webb on keyboards & mellotron, and Cobb on classical guitar & percussion.

Better late than never for an album like this one: Sturgill Simpson’s 2013 “High Top Mountain”

This is a half-assed review because the CD is from 2013. But it deserves to be whole-assed, because that CD is one of the best I’ve heard in a long, long time.

Sturgill Simpson’s High Top Mountain is just about as good as it ever gets. If I had made a list of the best albums of 2013, it would have been #2, behind only Jason Isbell’s Southeastern but beating Brandy Clark, Kacey Musgraves, and even Guy Clark. I bought my copy at a Simpson show in D.C. in November and haven’t looked back since.

I’m writing this review so late only to help me prep for my next review — Sturgill’s new 2014 release, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. I’m going to quick hit each track one by one, but skip most overarching notes, other than to say this is a true outlaw record (even if he does sing “the most outlaw thing that I’ve ever done was give a good woman a ring”) – and not like the faux “new outlaws” like Eric Church. When I first heard Sturgill sing and his band play in that bbq joint basement, I said “Holy crap they sound just like Waylon,” and most other critics have said the same. But that’s really an unfair thing to say and I need to stop, because despite the similarities, Sturgill is his own singer and definitely his own writer. He writes great songs, and knows how to sing them with soul.

It’s the opening guitar blast of “Life Ain’t Fair and the World is Mean,” it’s the growling on “Sitting Here Without You,” it’s the pacing and chorus lyrics on “Some Days.” The emotional loneliness of heartache we’ve all felt that is captured so perfectly in several of these songs. The fast tempo and steel guitars of “You Can Have the Crown” are enthralling. References to Baghdad and the Internet that keep it fresh and relevant. And everything, just everything about “Water in a Well” and “Time after All.” Am I gushing? I’m gushing. I love this album, especially for a solo debut where the artist wrote all but two of the tracks.

As for those two tracks – holy cow he lets loose on Ralph Stanley’s “Poor Rambler!” The other is the closer, Steven Fromholz’s “I’d Have to Be Crazy,” where Sturgill’s voice is just about perfect. Fromholz unfortunately passed away this year in a tragic hunting accident, but I’m glad he got to hear his music honored this way first (though apparently he didn’t like it). It’s really unfair to compare either cover to its original (or to Willie Nelson’s version of “I’d Have to Be Crazy”) because the styles are just so incredibly different — but if pressed, I would prrrrrobably say I prefer Stanley’s “Poor Rambler” but Sturgill’s “I’d Have to Be Crazy.”

Other than the Stanley comparison, the only less-than-positive thing I’ll say about High Top Mountain, and it isn’t even negative, is that I’d love it if Sturgill would try his hand at writing and singing some ballads. That would really bring him back to the older feel he told his producer he wanted. “Old King Coal” and “Hero” both come close but don’t quite check that box. “Hero,” about Sturgill’s grandfather, is a helluva song that reminds me of my own amazing grandfather John Mascarella, the greatest man I’ve ever known, but other than verse two it’s still ultimately describing a great man rather than telling his story. (Don’t get me wrong, I love that song, I’m just saying, it doesn’t check the ballad box.)

Five whiskey bottles out of five – and note that the digital copy is $2 cheaper on Sturgill’s site than on iTunes. It’s independently produced, so buying direct from the artist matters.

“High Top Mountain” was produced by Dave Cobb at Falling Rock and Hillbilly Central, both in Nashville, for Sturgill’s own independent label, “High Top Mountain Records.” It features Hall of Fame session musician Hargus “Pig” Robbins (his first major recording was Jones’s “White Lightning”) on piano; Chris Powell on drums; Waylon Jennings guitarist Robby Turner and Leroy Powell on steel guitar, Turner and Brian “Freedom Eagle Bear” Allen on bass, Bobby “Diamond Bob” Emmett on organ and Mellotron, and Cobb on 12-string electric guitar.