Despite my new love of the genre, Sturgill Simpson will not be boxed in as a country artist.
In my country music article at the start of the summer, I wrote about how Simpson’s music brought me over to the dark side. The dark side, of course, being the sounds of Ken Burns’ new favorite genre, country music. Those who have been “yee-hawing” for more than a few years have debated with me on the legitimacy of Simpson’s status as a country artist. However, his continued dominance in country music award categories kept my belief.
Three years after the release of his highly acclaimed A Sailor’s Guide to Earth LP (my awakening), comes the final album on his record deal, Sound & Fury. Personally, this was right on time. I was in the middle of my sun-infused, yearly country music phase: I went to a Jason Isbell show, I wrote an article about country music and I even watched three episodes of the Ken Burns Country Music documentary (that’s five hours, btw). I was ready to complete my Americana circle with this new album.
“It may seem now that I was totally oblivious to Simpson’s clues, but tell me, do you think Jesus is King is really going to be a true gospel album?”
I should’ve known something was off when he announced the album was going to be accompanying a Netflix anime film. Around the same time, he described it as a “sleazy rock-n-roll record.” Slightly sunburnt, I still was expecting some new country music. It may seem now that I was totally oblivious to Simpson’s clues, but tell me, do you think Jesus is King is really going to be a true gospel album? (Hint: it has a Clipse reunion.)
Simpson also said, in his recent NY Times interview, that he wanted the album to “hit like a Wu-Tang record.” What I’m trying to say is, you can never really trust an artist’s description of an album’s sound, you need to hear it for yourself.
When the first single (Sing Along) came out in late August, I was finally starting to accept what I was getting into. This was not going to be a sequel to his last work.
Going into A Sailor’s Guide to Earth’s release, Simpson noted that he was looking for a break. This was about three months before the album’s release. In May, a month after the release, he began a tour that lasted through November. He has since said that the extended tour was to build up hype leading up to the Grammys (he was nominated for album of the year) in February. The summer after the award show, he kept the momentum going with another tour, this one over the course of three months. He never got that break.
I saw him on the last tour, in Portland at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (one of the best venues in the city!). He later admitted this last run was to keep his name out there after a big-time nomination. It was a great show, but you could tell he was tired. Simpson always seemed less interested in this nomination than others who gained to profit from it.
2017 seems to be when Simpson decided he wasn’t going to release another country album for his fourth LP. He “boycotted” the Country Music Awards, instead choosing to busk outside the theater, criticize America’s “fascist” president, and raise money for the ACLU.
He was thinking about calling it quits all together in 2017, after a sinus surgery. Instead, while being high on edibles and reading Macbeth, he decided he “needed to purge”. That’s when Sound and Fury came in.
While Sound & Fury is not explicitly a protest album, it’s hard not to see it as one.
This album is different, but it’s still quite good. In fact, his choice to “purge” was probably one of the best he could’ve made, seeing where his head was at. Simpson is angry, and his music comes off that way. Not spiteful (okay, maybe a bit), not caught up in old beefs, just angry at what is going on around him. The album begins with a radio dial flipping around stations, briefly tuning to what sounds like Info Wars’ Alex Jones spouting his latest conspiracy. The driver responds to Jones with what is the angriest starting of a car that I have ever heard. The motor revs, and the album begins.
Even though he said that he wanted a Wu-Tang effect from his new record, it’s really a classic American rock album. Sing Along is about losing a romantic interest, Mercury in Retrograde speaks of the “haters” trying to get on his “already full” tour bus. The duration the album is driven by fuming, earplugs-needed-at-live-shows guitars.
Side note: Last weekend I went to see Vampire Weekend, whose set was filled with guitar solos, and the deafening noise made me resolve to invest in ear plugs. When Simpson announces his national tour for this new album, these will be mandatory.
“I never learned how to play so I broke the game,” sings Simpson on Last Man Standing.
Many young listeners who are growing up in a hip-hop era, associate country music with Trump’s America. It’s an easy association to make, in a highly polarized time. Simpson renounces that association. Just as he was beginning to be recognized as a new darling by country music’s power circle, he rejected all of it. He saw the associations that came with being a part of that world and used all the fame he could muster to make it clear that he was not to be lumped in with the red states he hailed from.
Simpson doesn’t reject his heritage though. There’s a distinct southern-ness to his voice and the album is drenched in classic American vibrato. Simpson spends one of the songs on the new album, Make Art Not Friends, promoting his time at home in peace and quiet. He hails from Kentucky, and lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Simpson proves, in an increasingly split society, that you don’t have to just be one thing or the other.
Simpson seems to be distancing himself from the country genre, and it’s hard to see him going back. That’s one of Simpson’s most unique traits, the conviction he gives each of his works.
