![]() Taylor's talent is well served on this album, and the craft is superb and soulful at the same time. As for Taylor's songs, he's better with mood than with narrative, but give him half a chance and these ten tunes will powerfully connect with you, as his meditations on life's trials and love's tribulations take root. The superb guitar work from Josh Kaufman, the evocative keyboards of Phil Cook, and the tough but implacable drumming of Darren Jessee give these songs just the right push they need, rocking gently but decisively while letting their country accents strut their stuff. His vocals generate the same mood with his full-bodied twang, and his studio band evokes the well-worn magnificence of the Band (both with and without Bob Dylan) and the overcast Midwestern temperament of the Jayhawks without suggesting they're tried to cop moves from either band. Here, Taylor's melodies sound both sunny and weathered, the work of a man who has seen good and bad in the world and has opted to remain optimistic without letting go of his realism. Taylor's sound has matured from the minimalist dark night of the soul of 2010's Bad Debt to the richly textured emotions of 2017's Hallelujah Anyhow, which in both attitude and technique suggests a great lost singer/songwriter album from the glory days of Laurel Canyon. Taylor's musical approach has continued to evolve. “Hardlytown,” is one of many lessons for his children-what it means to be a good neighbor.On his seventh album under the Hiss Golden Messenger moniker, vocalist, songwriter, and idea man M.C. “Way Back in the Way Back” and “Mighty Dollar” reckon with class and status. “If It Comes in the Morning” deals with debilitating uncertainty. The introspective vignettes grow more resonant within the context of normalized turbulence. In his lead single, “Sanctuary,” he sings: Feeling bad, feeling blue, can’t get out of my own mind but I know how to sing about it.Īnd so he does. ![]() “There’s always a piece of me that’s off in the musical world,” he shares. The artist addresses this head-on in “It Will If We Let It,” an apology to his wife of over 20 years. Who doesn’t occasionally consider if they could’ve spent the last five years doing something else?” Quietly Blowing It is a charting of experiences that are “intensely personal but in some ways universal. It’s wonderful, but it fills me with regret because I think I missed some things.” They’ve never seen me as much as they have this past year. “I devoted my life to music in a way that meant that I had to leave home for a lot of my kids’ lives. “I made decisions with consequences,” says Taylor. He continues, “I wrote to make sense and to begin the process of grieving and rebuilding my own life.” ![]() “As the specters of the coronavirus epidemic, mass civil rights protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by cops in Minneapolis, fires raging out of control on the West Coast, and the fractured presidential election roiled America, I wrote about things that felt important to bear witness to for myself,” he says in an essay, “Mourning in America.” Beneath the political undertones, the songs are “disarmingly inward looking.” The 11-track collection is part of his unrelenting pursuit of answers to the hard questions. Within those cinder block walls, plastered with crayon creations from his children, Taylor found peace. His collaborators-Taylor Goldsmith, Zach Williams, Buddy Miller, and producer Josh Kaufman-contributed from their respective homes via Dropbox and Zoom. Through the sliding glass doors of the basement, an impressive vinyl collection lines the narrow hallway into his home studio-an eight-by-ten alcove where this album came to life amidst the pandemic. “When all this shit happened, I was almost relieved,” he states frankly. Taylor swears it’s the best $10,000 he’s ever spent. Backstage at a show in the UK, paralyzed by the thought of his impending solo tour dates, he canceled his next leg in Australia. Taylor softens as he recalls touring his Grammy-nominated album Terms of Surrender in late 2019. Quietly Blowing It , released June 25 on Merge Records, is his eleventh. Since 2009, marked by debut album Country Hai East Cotton , the Los Angeles native has made records with a dynamic rotation of musicians under the denomination Hiss Golden Messenger. There are a lot of threads in the fabric.” But I also think it’s why people who connect with it connect so deeply. “I’ve always tried to make music that was hard to categorize, music that presents a challenge,” says Taylor. The term Americana, he says, “doesn’t make me particularly bristle.” From a business perspective, he understands the purpose it serves as a label.
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