![]() Beneath the political undertones, the songs are “disarmingly inward looking.” The 11-track collection is part of his unrelenting pursuit of answers to the hard questions. Within those cinder block walls, plastered with crayon creations from his children, Taylor found peace. His collaborators-Taylor Goldsmith, Zach Williams, Buddy Miller, and producer Josh Kaufman-contributed from their respective homes via Dropbox and Zoom. Through the sliding glass doors of the basement, an impressive vinyl collection lines the narrow hallway into his home studio-an eight-by-ten alcove where this album came to life amidst the pandemic. “When all this shit happened, I was almost relieved,” he states frankly. Taylor swears it’s the best $10,000 he’s ever spent. Backstage at a show in the UK, paralyzed by the thought of his impending solo tour dates, he canceled his next leg in Australia. ![]() Taylor softens as he recalls touring his Grammy-nominated album Terms of Surrender in late 2019. Quietly Blowing It , released June 25 on Merge Records, is his eleventh. Since 2009, marked by debut album Country Hai East Cotton , the Los Angeles native has made records with a dynamic rotation of musicians under the denomination Hiss Golden Messenger. There are a lot of threads in the fabric.” But I also think it’s why people who connect with it connect so deeply. “I’ve always tried to make music that was hard to categorize, music that presents a challenge,” says Taylor. In a decade or two, Haw will sound as warm, clear, and spooky as it does today.The term Americana, he says, “doesn’t make me particularly bristle.” From a business perspective, he understands the purpose it serves as a label. But HGM stand out because they don't combine them so much as play them simultaneously and inseparably as part of a single tradition. The many different musics on Haw are familiar, timeless they can be endlessly recombined for new purposes. They are merely articulated through his experience, not his own wisdom. Throughout these songs, Taylor's lyrics and the grain in his voice reveal that, whatever truths there are in these songs, they come from antiquity, and the land itself, which is an extension of the divine. The band effortlessly embodies the traditions of country, folk, rock, and bluegrass simultaneously to support his delivery. The backwoods country-rock of "Sweet as John Hurt" has Taylor autobiographically proclaiming "I come from the bottom of the river Haw" (he does), as electric guitars and Gordon Hartin's pedal steel decorate his drawling plaintive vocal. The lyric is world-weary, disenchanted, yet refuses to stray from the stubborn path chosen by the protagonist. Layered fiddles come in midway to act as a bridge, but the track circles back to its nearly hypnotic slowness. Its loose-tuned drums are the only non-reverbed instrument, as Taylor's voice comes wafting from the center as shimmering electric guitars, a snail-paced bassline, and endlessly echoing acoustics surround him. "Devotion" is slow enough to have been played by Crazy Horse. ![]() ![]() The back-porch flatpicking acoustic guitar ramble that is "I've Got a Name for the Newborn Child" is offset by a shuffling snare that resonates under the hooky chorus. The melding of Taylor's and Sonia Turner's voices is haunting, beautiful, darkly prophetic the swirling violins and horns that intermittently appear and vanish create textural dimensions that make it all the more mysterious. The eerie spiritual country psych in "Sufferer (Love My Conqueror)" is where roots meet space. In opener "Red Rose Nantahala," rockabilly, electric Piedmont blues, and a popping, greasy Stax-like bassline all meld with their edges exposed. They are musically rooted in the traditions of the American South - folk, bluegrass, swampy rock, country gospel, warped R&B - and offer strange twists and turns on them all. These 11 songs are drenched in eternal themes: faith, dread, family, spirituality, and metaphor. The set features over half a dozen guests, including guitarist William Tyler. Taylor and guitarist/bassist Scott Hirsch, has become a quintet. The band, originally just songwriter/vocalist/guitarist M.C. It is titled alternately for a river in North Carolina and for a now extinct Indian tribe from the same region. Haw is Hiss Golden Messenger's second offering for Paradise of Bachelors. ![]()
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