ROUTES & BRANCHES  
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
November 11, 2018
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

I'm regularly disappointed by my own writing.  Question is, why write about something when others have written more satisfyingly about the same thing.  I flop around in hopes of establishing my own voice, then I read something from another writer who makes my stuff look like the back of a cereal box.  There are some real quality writers out there, and you could do worse than click down the list of sites to your right, filed under A Good Place to Start.  All that to say that the Noisey site has published a great piece profiling MC Taylor and Hiss Golden Messenger on the occasion of the release of Devotion: Songs About Rivers and Spirits and Children.

After years of alphabetizing nearly everything I was ever sent by labels, artists and promoters, I recently jettisoned almost 2000 CDs.  I'm not a collector, no longer entirely hooked by the material side of what we do.  That said, Devotion is an imminently satisfying package, a slipcased 4-CD/LP set with some fine original art (Sam Smith) and liner notes (Amanda Petrusich, John Mulvey), defining a distinctly important period in the development of Hiss Golden Messenger.

More recently, Taylor and his collaborators have delivered a trio of superb records that stand together as a statement:  Lateness of Dancers (14), Heart Like a Levee (16) and Hallelujah Anyhow (17).  Almost everything on the new box set has previously been heard, though the tracks are remastered.  The bulk of the impact comes from hearing these earlier cuts alongside one another, and hearing them with HGM's current output fresh in our ears.

Remember too that MC Taylor was initially part of a California outfit called Court & Spark.  Upon their dissolution, he recorded Country Hai East Cotton as Hiss Golden Messenger in 2009.  His young family fell into dire financial straits soon after, which prompted the first album in this box, 2010's Bad Debt.  Taylor famously set his songs to cassette tape from the family's North Carolina kitchen table, his toddler son asleep in the next room.  It's a lo-fi/no-fi project, with acoustic guitar and vocals punctuated by squeaking chairs, tape hiss and unidentified bumps.  But the genesis of HGM already exists, especially in words and themes that would echo throughout Taylor's work going forward:  O little light / No, I'm not afraid to die / But look at what I've got / I'd like to stay just a little while.  The session's intimacy reaches beyond the setting, as the writer lays bare his hopes and fears, doubts and confessions.  The pastoral folk of "O Little Light", "Straw Man Red Sun River Gold" and "Super Blue (Two Days Clean)" remains endearing, even a welcome reprieve from the relative studio perfection of later work.  Owing to a limited release and a label fire, Bad Debt never made it far from home, and half of the songs would be re-recorded on subsequent records.

On the surface, 2012's Poor Moon is a different beast, following Taylor out from the kitchen and into the studio with friends like Nathan Bowles, Hans Chew and Scott Hirsch.  Flesh and feathers are added to songs we heard in their rawest form on Bad Debt, such as "Call Him Daylight" and "Jesus Shot Me in the Head".  The previously introspective "Super Blue" has become a driving shuffle with keys, electric guitars and drums, Taylor delivering a commanding vocal.  Folk roots are never far from the surface, especially on the CD's beautiful instrumentals, and the open studio door allows in the sounds of owls, crickets, thunder.  Having relocated from one coast to the other, Hiss Golden Messenger sought to absorb and reflect the vernacular as heard in the word, the soil, the faith of the South:  I think love is in the living / Rook, crow, little sparrow, and under all the land / Oh what is love / What is love / I am.  Of Poor Moon's unheard tracks, "Westering" and "Blue Country Mystic" cast their spell with horns, keys and full sail soul.  With its keening pedal steel, fiddle and a loose acoustic arrangement, "A Working Man Can't Make It No Way" is as country as Taylor gets, evoking the spirit of Merle Haggard.

2013's Haw presents Hiss Golden Messenger, fully formed, adding the valuable voices of William Tyler and Brad and Phil Cook to the musical mix. Where Poor Moon seemed almost celebratory, Taylor calls its successor "autumnal" and "a set of dusty little prayers", expressing questions and achieving a comfortable peace with doubt: Say whatever prayer you want / In whatever darkness you end up in / To Jehovah or Yahoway or Red Rose Nantahala / O lord let me be happy.  Pieces like "Devotion" and "Sweet As John Hurt" mine deeper from blues, country and gospel more than they do folk music.  Certain of the songs add studio treatments, strings and even experiment a bit, but never sacrificing the vulnerability that characterized those earliest sessions.  Standout tracks include "I've Got a Name For the Newborn Child" and "Red Rose Nantahala", both of which speak to the smoothness of MC Taylor's vocals, perfectly compromised with a touch of rasp.

Virgo Fool is the wildcard of this deck, a restless gathering of odds 'n sods from throughout this early period. There are some covers of tunes originally by Michael Hurley and Ronnie Lane, as well as an unexpectedly admirable take on Led Zeppelin's "Black Country Woman" that features some strong gospel elements and box-of-rocks percussion.  "Lion/Lamb" recalls Iron & Wine:  It's hard to be free / We all search for new shackles / Yes we take them happily.  "Rock Holy" hearkens to Hiss Golden Messenger records that would be released in years to come, with more aggressive fuzz guitar and keys, horns and backing vocals verging on funky.  If there is a revelation on Virgo Fool it is "Issa", a haunting psychedelic blues outtake from Haw that features the box set's only flute solo:  What do you do with your heart of stone / And your hat full of rain / What do you do with your jaded eyes / That cannot mark a thing.

Which all makes one wonder where the first step in the next chapter of Hiss Golden Messenger might lead us.  The Noisey piece mentions that we should expect a new studio project this Spring: My records kind of unfurl like chapters of a really long book. My reinventions from record to record, they're still re-combinations of the things that I know communicate my emotions the best. I guess what I'm saying is, it's unlikely that I'm gonna make a dance record. Not because I don't like that music, but because I need to be using a language that feels absolutely genuine to me. (Folks who appreciate quality music writing will also want to check out a recent profile published by The Atlantic) From those earliest tentative dinner table sessions to last year's more groove-oriented CD, Taylor's familiar language and the integrity of his vision have proven the constant.  A student and then a teacher of folklore, Taylor proves the malleability of his medium.  As a lyricist, he embraces the value of traditional Bible stories and questions, though he does not call himself a Christian.  Weaving the imminently familiar rhythms and the seasons of the natural world, of Rivers and Spirits and Children, Hiss Golden Messenger has generated a mythology all of his own. What shall be / Shall be enough.

- Lucinda Williams, "Metal Firecracker" Car Wheels On a Gravel Road  (Mercury, 98)
- William Tyler, "Fail Safe" Goes West  (Merge, 19)  D
- Dirty River Boys, "Western Star" Mesa Starlight  (DRB, 18)
- Michigan Rattlers, "Didn't You Know" Evergreen  (Rattlers, 18)
- AA Bondy, "American Hearts" American Hearts  (Fat Possum, 07)
- Lauren Morrow, "I Don't Think About You At All" Lauren Morrow  (Morrow, 18)
- Jason Isbell & 400 Unit, "Flying Over Water (live)" Live From the Ryman  (Southeastern, 18)
- John R Miller, "How It Feels In the Light" Trouble You Follow  (Emperor, 18)
- Drive-by Truckers, "Late For Church" Ganstabilly  (Ruth St, 98)
- State Champions, "If You Don't Show Me" Send Flowers  (Sophomore Lounge, 18)  D
- Timber, "Shuttlecock" Family  (Cornelius Chapel, 18)  D
- Pistol Annies, "Commisary" Interstate Gospel  (Sony, 18)
- Blackberry Smoke, "Mother Mountain (feat. Oliver Wood)" Southern Ground Sessions  (3 Legged, 18)
- Low Anthem, "Yellowed by the Sun" What the Crow Brings  (Low Anthem, 07)
- Western Star, "Paper Leather & Lead"  Any Way How  (Saustex, 18)  D
- Kent Eugene Goolsby, "Take Another Shot" Every Way But Easy  (KEG, 18)
- Carter Sampson, "Peaches" Lucky  (Horton, 18)
- Steel Woods, "Rock That Says My Name" Old News  (Woods, 19)
- Nathan Bowles, "Ruby / In Kind I" Plainly Mistaken  (Paradise of Bachelors, 18)
- Deer Tick, "White City" Mayonnaise  (Partisan, 18)
- Rhett Miller, "Permanent Damage" Messenger  (ATO, 18)
- Hayes Carll, "None 'ya" What It Is  (Dualtone, 19)  D
- Mavis Staples, "No Time For Tryin'" Live in London  (Anti, 19)  D
^ Hiss Golden Messenger, "I've Got a Name For the Newborn Child" Haw Remastered  (Merge, 18)
- One Eleven Heavy, "Crosses" Everything's Better  (Kith & Kin, 18)
- Rosanne Cash, "Only Thing Worth Fighting For" She Remembers Everything  (Blue Note, 18)
- Will Oldham, "Ohio River Boat Song" Songs of Love and Horror  (Drag City, 18)
- Fruit Bats, "Getting In a Van Again" single  (Merge, 18)  D
- GospelbeacH, "Runnin' Blind (Winter Version)" Another Winter Alive  (Alive Naturalsound, 18)
- Anna Tivel, "Fenceline" The Question  (Fluff & Gravy, 19)

This busy busy week we add new stuff to our mix from familiar friends like William Tyler and Hayes Carll.  Will Stewart continues an already successful 2018 with a new project under the Timber moniker.  And we throw some true grit into the proceedings with some help from State Champion and Deer Tick, dropping an electric Pogues cover. Western Star.  Next week, we'll take a tentative dip into our year-end traditions, asking favorite R&B artists about their own favorites from the last twelve months (or so).