![]() So how fascinating and utterly harmonious that the set of songs that makes up the latest Hiss Golden Messenger album was written at the height of the realization that we are all capable of living with less less consumption, less activity, less superficiality. It has been the reliable light in the darkness, seeking goodness in everyone and creating the kind of live show experience that leaves you feeling satiated and unburdened, with an inkling to get back to a simpler way of being, to uncomplicate your life. But we’re still not doing the one-drop groove.M.C. I actually started another band this year-Revelators-that’s instrumental and does draw inspiration from dub reggae and free jazz in a way that’s very obvious. I’m looking for a more nuanced way to show my love for that music. I’m always looking for a way to tip my hat to that type of music without actually playing the one-drop. Maybe that explains to warm groove of this record. I’ve just gone so far down that rabbit hole. I also spent a lot of time with Jamaican music from 1970 to 1985. It’s the first time in my kids’ lives that they’ve had me home for this long of an uninterrupted stretch. It’s hard to imagine having gone though the past year and a half alone-even when it felt like we were getting in each other’s hair. I have two kids-my daughter is about to turn eight, and my son is 12. Sequencing is this weird mental exercise.Īside from music, what’s kept you sane over the past 18 months?īeing with my family. I had to find the right spots for those songs-“The Great Mystifier,” “Sanctuary,” “Hardly Town”-so the record didn’t sound like it was bogged down in midtempo stuff. There’s not a ton uptempo tunes on the record. This record was incredibly tricky to sequence. I want it to feel like, when you get to the end, you’re like, “Oh, it’s over?”Īnd you do that by ending with “Sanctuary,” the catchiest song on the album. ![]() If I can get my records to 40 minutes or so, that feels like plenty. Seventeen to 19-and-a-half minutes per side is the perfect length of time. I left quite a few songs I had an affection for off the record. Not all of them were finished, and certainly not all of them were good. You had quite a few songs to choose from for this one. Or maybe we just found a certain groove on this record. I’ve always played close attention to the rhythm section. Over the past six or seven years, we’ve come up with an approach to this music that’s fun and, for Matt, interesting to play. I do think that the many months of composing and arranging by myself had something to do with the way the record falls together rhythmically. There was a lot of solitude in the composing of it, and the place I so often went was the groove you hear on the record. Lyrically, I think it’s a pretty clear-eyed assessment of the way that my life feels at the moment. It didn’t want it to be tagged as something set apart from my other work simply due to the time when it was made. I think your right in that it’s not a quarantine album. The album also has an upbeat groove to it. So, when we went into the studio for real, I was asking for a lot of cowbell. When I wrote, demoed and arranged the album in my small studio at home, I was playing all the drums and percussion in those versions-and I had cowbell that I kept reaching for. It does a very specific tonal and rhythmic thing. It’s a great and often misused percussion instrument. ![]() Well, yeah, there’s a lot of cowbell on this one. More on that last thing below.Īfter listening to Quietly Blowing It too many times to count, two words come to mind: More cowbell. It’s the exhale that comes after groping your way out of the abyss, clinging to the things that really matter: family, friends, love, passion-and plenty of cowbell. As the titled implies, Quietly Blowing It sees our flawed humanity and the world’s perpetual state of crisis for what it is. His is a hard-earned contentment gleaned from acceptance. He wrote daily, coming up with about 24 songs before bringing a smaller batch to his band at Durham’s Overdub Lane, where they hammered out a nimble and lean 11-song LP.Ī wide-eyed realist, Taylor isn’t one to get wrapped up in any sort of “all is well” naivete. The follow-up to the Grammy-nominated Terms Of Surrender was written and arranged by Taylor at an easy pace in his Durham, N.C., home studio. Taylor’s most joyful-which seems a bit odd given its lockdown origins. Quietly Blowing It (Merge) is Hiss Golden Messenger’s funkiest album to date.
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