Yahoo Finance Sturgill Simpson Is a Country Wolf in Soulful Sheep's Clothing
"Next time I write a record and pour my heart out, I gotta remember that I gotta go out and sing that shit."
Sturgill Simpson is the kind of country singer who favors Henley t-shirts and dad jeans over Stetsons. He likes brass just as much as he does banjos and lap steel-prefers it, even. He pens hallucinogenic-fed, Buddha-invoking musings on spirituality that steer clear of the language of scripture unlike the Jesus-touting lyrics of his colleagues. He grits his teeth, gallops across the stage, and sneers at the conspirators in his band just as intently as he caresses a microphone stand and swings himself around it in a state of "Red Light Special"-channeling rapture. He's a walking, talking L.L. Bean catalog model right down to sensible footwear and Selleckian mustache, and yet appearances are very much so deceiving as he's perpetually throwing country music-and popular music at large-into a tizzy over his ability to take something as straightforward and beloved as a Nirvana song and turn around a jazzy, transcendent update that garners as much adoration as the original.
In short, Simpson, in the early wake of his third full-length and most ambitious effort yet, is getting all "Songs of Myself" on his curious, eager public. He contains goddamn multitudes, and he's doing a fantastic job of making sure that every interaction with the songs of A Sailor's Guide to Earth leads the listener to that same conclusion.
Simpson uttered that brief, vulnerable quip-"I gotta go out and sing that shit"-in Brooklyn last week, where Simpson and his band celebrated the release of A Sailor's Guide to Earth at Rough Trade NYC. It's a venue roughly a fifth of the size of the rooms he'll be playing for his upcoming tour (which kicks off on May 5 at Austin's Moody Theater), making the Sailor's Guide release show an intimate squeeze for those who'd packed in to see him back when he was touring behind his twang-heavy, dark horse of a genre-bender, 2014's Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. Plenty has changed for Simpson since then, and the album's intro wastes no time in addressing this: "Hello, my son" are the first words we hear on the record, as are his laments over spending too much time away from his child on the road (Simpson became a father shortly following Metadmodern's release). Playing through the album, Simpson relished in his strong, clear vocal lines, very much so playing the part of the smooth singer as opposed to the steel string-toting descendant of Johnny, Waylon, and Willie.
With Sailor's Guide-which benefits from the lustrous additions of the Dap-Kings' horn section, along with the veritable might of Simpson's country-leaning, rock-savvy band-Simpson savors each verse, considering cadence and the shapes of his sentences with the rhythmic proclivities of a poet. In spite of the presence of pedal steel licks and the regional betrayal of his accent, Sailor's Guide indicates that Simpson's musical loyalties lie more with the bluesy legacy of Muscle Shoals than that of Nashville. "Brace for Impact (Live a Little)," "All Around You," and the vintage vibe of album opener "Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)" all lean to the soulful side; bring in the dramatic orchestral arrangements on "Breakers Roar" and "Oh Sarah" and the definitively country feel of "Sea Stories" and you've got a compact demonstration of Simpson's stylistic dexterity, one that giddily paints country, R&B, Motown, jazz, and classical strokes from the same brush.
And therein lies the beautiful balance of Simpson's excellence on record and onstage: He doesn't just savor his words for the sake of a job well done, but straight-up delights in them, and the Rough Trade gig proved that success and the co-sign of a major label hasn't changed that aspect of his work in the slightest. (Sailor's Guide is Simpson's first album put out by Atlantic Records; his two full-lengths prior, Metamodern Sounds and 2013's High Top Mountain, were released independently through his own imprint, High Top Mountain.) He approached his now infamous cover of Nirvana's "In Bloom" with the velvet touch of a Vegas showman-the classy, un-sequined kind- and roared through Sailor's Guide's closer "Call to Arms," which stands out from the rest of the record for its unfettered intensity as an uncensored, anti-war rallying cry. Simpson has no problem sampling the flavors of different genres in his live set, and his enthusiasm for each and every track doesn't play favorites between the brass and the bluegrass, either.
So yes, Simpson, you do gotta sing that shit, as it's impossible to imagine you settling for anything less. If Sailor's Guide proves anything, it's that you're incapable of doing so.
