TRAiPSiNG THRU the AiSLES: add these to your basket (November 25, 2024)

TRAiPSiNG THRU the AiSLES: add these to your basket

November 25, 2024

Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

On his 1996 album, Songs For the New Year, Omaha's Simon Joyner sings a song called "Born Of Longing". Written prior to the birth of his son, Owen, the song imagines the young man coming into his own, regarding the father who raised him. 

So a child lights a fire just to look in the mirror / For soon he'll be wearing his Papa's grey beard / All his days in the country full of flame and born of longing / Into the haze of the cityscape they all but disappear / Like horses running out of prairie

Like Joyner's work in general, it's unconventionally beautiful, delivered in the songwriter's matter-of-fact drawl, accompanied by nothing more than what's necessary to make a song.  

The child who served as inspiration for "Born Of Longing" would grow into a young man, but would pass away in 2022, the victim of an overdose. 

Supported by his family and musical community, Simon Joyner eventually wrote again, entering the studio and recording his bare tracks that have become Coyote Butterfly, a document of a man in the wake of the death of his son. Aside from the field recordings which bookend the project's eight cuts, the tracks feature Joyner's familiar collaborators: David Nance, James Schroeder, Kevin Donahue, Ben Brodin, and Michael Krassner. The cohort deploy a soft layer of keys, guitar, strings, and percussion atop the songwriter's acoustic guitar and vocals. 

"I'm Taking You With Me" introduces Coyote Butterfly from the point of view of the deceased, a striking tactic that speaks to the grief of the father: You were singing when I died / So you'd like to cut out your tongue. To an admirable degree, Joyner lays bare his feelings, his remorse in ways that are both poetically and emotionally honest. On "My Lament": If only I had returned your last call / And we grabbed that birthday dinner after all / I might have said the one thing that works like a butterflly's wing / And you'd be here and our belies would be full. 

Simon Joyner has called his new record a celebration of life, and while emotions are raw Coyote Butterfly portrays a fuller gamut of sentiment. "There Will Be a Time" represents this best, with its hymnlike procession and beautiful instrumentation: There will be a time when our swollen eyes see all we've left behind, Joyner proclaims. Even the sun seems like a sliver just before it climbs. A melodic organ underlays the track, adding piano and acoustic guitar. The title song begins with longing, but closes in a spirit of gratitude: If only I could show you through my eyes / How it felt to spend a moment in your light. 

Joyner has proven himself a superior lyricist, capable of walking the beam between clear-eyed understanding and melancholy. With his unadorned delivery, he sounds weary on these songs, sighing on "Biloxi", This life is so goddamn hard. An almost bluesy highlight, "Silver Birch" reads at times like a fable: And then it began to rain / And it rained for over a yeaer / And the silver birch turned grey and bitter like me. Simon Joyner has never been known as an uplifting artist, but there is a lovely grace to these songs, played with real patience and sensitivity. 

It's not possible to listen to Coyote Butterfly solely as a collection of songs. We listen as people who have lost loved ones, maybe even in the midst of grieving. Like Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree, where he addressed the passing of his own son, we recognize Simon Joyner's new work as a necessary part of the artist's own intimate process, offered more out of necessity than obligation. It's also an important document, joining just a handful of other albums from artists bold enough to lay bare at such a vulnerable moment. How or whether we choose to engage in such heavy lifting is up to us. For our part, we're grateful.

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