![]() ![]() His vocals are similar to those of John Mayer, smooth and unruffled, even when the subject matter concerns the frustrations and inherent dichotomies of the life he has chosen. Neil Young's influence seeps into ‘Glory Strums (Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner)’ as a high lonesome harmonica reflects the solitude and internal struggle Taylor feels, akin to the titular athlete as he sings “I know that there’s good in me / Why’s it such a hard time?”. There’s a whiff of Steely Dan in the opening ‘Way Back in the Way Back’ as horns and backing singers bring sweet R&B to a tune with the somewhat ominous lyrics of “The peace sign is broken / What is forgiveness? / What is atonement? / I wanna go home”. On the contrary, these elegant, blue-eyed soul gems float and flow out of the speakers with an easygoing, some may say comforting, groove. That’s a huge chunk of heaviosity for any record to bear, but Taylor’s approach on Quietly Blowing It is far from a downer. Alienation, disorientation, and self-hatred…and I wrote about the inverse of those things too.” “I wrote about things that felt important to bear witness to for myself: Class and money and work. It was an intense and personal process, he describes in ‘Mourning in America’, an essay he penned about this project. Taylor took advantage of the situation to ensconce himself in an 8’ x 10’ room in his Durham, North Carolina home to work daily on composing tracks, resulting in Quietly Blowing It, his twelfth set. Taylor’s (aka Hiss Golden Messenger) case, the pandemic arrived when he was feeling drained from the constant strain of road work and churning out new material written on tour. The income generated from touring that artists and support staffs count on in this era of streaming and anaemic physical sales was quickly eradicated. “That’s all that’ll save you.For most in the concert end of the music business, 2020 was a cold slap in the face. “You gotta let someone in,” as he puts it on the title track. ![]() All those musical references can help make it seem like Quietly Blowing It is offering prophetic wisdom even when Taylor is merely just trying to write himself out of hard times. On Quietly Blowing It he embraces his role as roots synthesizer, conjuring and quoting everyone from Sly Stone and Curtis Mayfield to Rod Stewart and John Prine. įaced with a period of prolonged seclusion, Taylor turned, as ever, to his record collection. But Taylor has grown immensely as a melodicist and arranger (he self-produced this album) in the ensuing decade, and the LP, which features contributions from longtime companions like Josh Kaufman and Scott Hirsch, is full of the collaborative warmth of recent Hiss landmarks like Heart Like a Levee. On “Sanctuary,” meanwhile, the comfort of loving embrace offers respite amidst devastation.Īs one might expect from a record made during a time of intense isolation, much of the music on Quietly Blowing It feels solitary, subdued, and contemplative, calling to mind, at times, the cloistered folk of earlier Hiss records like 2012’s Poor Moon. Inner turmoil bleeds into a sense of shared tragedy and vice versa throughout its 11 songs: On the title track, the song’s narrator, dealing with interpersonal unrest, glances at the television and notices that “there’s a riot goin’ on” outside the walls of his home as well as inside. Written and recorded largely during the earliest months of the pandemic in the spring and summer of 2020, Quietly Blowing It maintains an ever-present sense of calamity, both personal and collective. Taylor’s mournful meditation on a year of loss, grief, and upheaval may be more sparse and sedated than the 2019 Brad Cook and Aaron Dessner-assisted Terms of Surrender, but this offering of solemn joy and hopeful sorrow is also the most timely record of his career. ![]() Rarely do songwriters who release original music so often manage to make each release feel as necessary as Taylor - A nd no Hiss Golden Messenger record has ever felt more necessary than his new LP, Quietly Blowing It. But more impressive than the sheer quantity of the North Carolina singer-songwriter’s output is the degree of spiritual sensitivity, compositional craft, and high-stakes emotional urgency Taylor has been able to bring to each collection in such quick succession. Taylor has released four new albums (and a slew of outtakes compilations and live records) under the moniker of his country-soul recording outfit, Hiss Golden Messenger. ![]()
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