the Sturgill Simpson c/d

Good 2014 Billy Joe album: Long In The Tooth.

Slate's Carl Wilson from their end of the year roundtable chat-- on 2014 country albums he likes, and then starting trouble re Sturgill:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_music_club/features/2014/slate_music_club_2014/the_best_podcasts_about_music_2014_s_best_protest_songs_and_answer_songs.html

I’m glad Craig also shouted out the new albums from Lee Ann Womack and Angaleena Presley, whose incisive American Middle Class dramatized a woman’s perspective on the 99-percent experience even more assertively than Kacey Musgraves’ “Merry Go ’Round” did last year. Womack’s indie-label The Way I’m Livin’, with its unsparing portraits of hard-drinking, hard-loving, self-snafu’ing lives, would gobsmack anyone who knows only her hit high-school-grad valedictory, “I Hope You Dance.” There was also Sunny Sweeney’s Provoked, Lydia Loveless’s Somewhere Else, and the big sister many of us have mentioned, Miranda Lambert’s Platinum, one of the most fully realized albums of the year, which still earned it only middling airplay.

I’ve been just a tad chagrined to see Sturgill Simpson’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music get so much more notice on year-end lists than most of the above. Maybe people are thankful to hear a male pick up the clue, or maybe when they think of trad country they just want to hear someone with a deep Johnny/Conway/Merle voice. Not that Simpson’s music isn’t singular and strong, but it’s also the sort of album we heard fairly routinely at the peak of “alt-country” a decade-plus back, a period many critics seem to scorn. Why the turnaround? To me Metamodern didn’t have the crackle of necessity that, say, Presley’s set did. What’s more, why always Simpson and never Ray LaMontagne’s Supernova, for instance? As with hip-hop, there’s a rock-crit default country album every year, too.

idk what "crackle of necessity" means

So he's singular and strong and has a deep voice that sounds like other singers people like. That's a pretty high start for a supposedly undeserving album. I'm not sure I recall much alt-country stuff from back in the day that sounded like, dunno, Waylon or Merle. Bit of Buck Owens and the Byrds, etc., plenty of rock-country fusion, Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly and Sun stuff and whatnot, but stuff that sounds like Merle Haggard or Jennings? Not so sure about that. While I haven't paid attention to any 2014 year-end stuff, and would be sad if Sturgill made it on lists that Womack and Presley missed, I'm not sure how anyone could say the Simpson is somehow not worthy of any year-end ranking that those others deserve.

So his point is that if you were obligated to include one and only one country record, it should not be the Simpson?

I don't see the connection here either: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X294h3dl2_I this sounds like some shitty generic indie rock

xp

I do like that Womack record, that's a good 'un

I'm not sure I recall much alt-country stuff from back in the day that sounded like, dunno, Waylon or Merle. Bit of Buck Owens and the Byrds, etc., plenty of rock-country fusion

I didn't pay much attention to alt-country but what I did hear it seemed like the major reference point was Parsons, not Waylon/Merle/Willie

What’s more, why always Simpson and never Ray LaMontagne’s Supernova, for instance?

lol

that dude isn't country is he?

ray lamontagne sings like the iron & wine dude so to me that is a point decidedly in sturgill simpson's favor

re: that piece, the lambert/presley/womack/loveless albums are all genuinely great but i think simpson feels a bit apart from the country scene, which is why he's mentioned by many year-end listmakers who don't even think about considering 'platinum' or 'american middle class' or some others.

those felt too radioish to me, didn't feel like putting in the work to get comfortable with them

i just kinda hate the whole backlash aspect where it's like i get it i'm sure there are albums in all sorts of niches that ppl with broad tastes by nature just don't find out about or dig but you can't dig deep into EVERYTHING and the sturgill record is good, and the kinda hardcore outlaw/merle thing meets the druggy/psych aspects did feel unique in some ways to me

yeah I don't like being browbeaten about how I'm supposed to be more invested in a particular genre

I spent most of my young childhood digging George Strait records & now as an adult I'm burnt out on booze + weed + cosmic anguish so Simpson is catnip for me. I think the Lee Ann Womack record is great too fwiw, Angaleena Presley less so but it has its moments.

the Carl Wilson thing is annoying because it reminds me of how uncomfortable critical acclaim for a relatively uncommercial/unpopular album makes critics as a whole - without the validation of the market, they start to get nervous, it's pretty clearly a "well we all like it, but the market doesn't, what's WRONG with us" dynamic at work; it's pre-emptive anxiety about potential charges of elitism.

that goes double for pop/populist genres like country and r&b

that… doesn't sound like a thing?

i don't know how successful they want the record to be, i imagine that for this day and age it's sold well. certainly his shows do well.

i mean they keep multiple copies in stock at every record store (ha!) i know. clearly people are buying it.

also, you may or may not like it, but simpson is bringing something /relatively/ new to the idiom he's chosen to work in. i'm not sure that i can think of many autodidacts with quite as eccentric an intellectual pedigree who show their hand so boldly in a country-music context.

I wanted to see him but he had a State Fair gig he canceled to go on tour w Brad Paisley or someone big like that then his solo club show sold out super fast

Sturgill just signed to Atlantic. Interesting.

What <is> Atlantic these days anyway?

With over 60 years of recorded music history, our passion for artistry in music continues today as a new generation of incredible artists including Bruno Mars, Coldplay, fun., Jason Mraz, Ed Sheeran, Wiz Khalifa, Janelle Monáe, Skrillex, Trey Songz, Hunter Hayes and more continue to further the Atlantic Records legacy.

Nevermind...

sturgill simpson and my mans trey songz

I predict this goes really well lol

http://www.twangnation.com/blog/http://example.com/uploads/2015/01/sturgill-simpson-atlantic-001-300x300.jpg

Nick Tosches on Willie Nelson's Shotgun Willie: "...horns, and basically just what you'd expect of a country album on Atlantic." Yeah, and I like it. So, here's hoping...(Carla: "Otis, you country! Straight from the Georgia woods." Otis: "What!")

And maybe a little more for Light In The Attic's stoned Country Funk series.

OTIS REDDING, RAY CHARLES, WILLIE NELSON, ARETHA FRANKLIN.....SKRILLEX

I think Sturgill is one of those dudes who, due to his blooming popularity, really do need the larger distribution power of a major. Or needs a major to take it to the proverbial next level, in terms of sales and whatnot. Esp. in the country world, which really has never cottoned well to "independence," at least not beyond the 4th of July.

I wonder if they're going to reissue Metamodern first before putting out his next one.

Posted in the Rolling country thread:

http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/metamodern-sounds-and-facebook-country/Content?oid=4888206

Results of the Nashville Scene Country Music Critics Poll are up. Which seem to have been posted with relatively little fanfare.

Unsurprised that Sturgill Simpson edged Miranda Lambert for Best Album based upon the Pazz & Jop results.

― jon_oh, Thursday, January 22, 2015 11:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The triumph of Sturgill Simpson's Metamodern Sounds in Country Music as the Best Album in the Scene's 15th annual Country Music Critics Poll is significant for several reasons. For one, it was the narrowest victory in the poll's history. If just one voter had added Miranda Lambert's Platinum as the ninth-best album, she would have won. As it was, she won the Best Artist category by a comfortable margin over runner-up Simpson.

― curmudgeon, Friday, January 23, 2015 12:46 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The latter paragraph is me quoting Poll poobah Geoff Himes

Nick Tosches on Willie Nelson's Shotgun Willie: "...horns, and basically just what you'd expect of a country album on Atlantic." Yeah, and I like it. So, here's hoping...(Carla: "Otis, you country! Straight from the Georgia woods." Otis: "What!")

b/c today's atlantic records is no doubt the same as it was when jerry wexler was running things?

I will concede to the "Sturgill Simpson isn't real country" crowd that it doesn't look like he's coming to Georgia, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, or Mississippi on his tour

he just toured the south in November.

also country music isn't really a southern phenomenon (although in the popular imagination it's very much tied to the south)

williamsburg show is sold out, kinda want to find tix

also country music isn't really a southern phenomenon (although in the popular imagination it's very much tied to the south)

Yeah, seriously. Aside from the cities, most of this country really is a giant Texas. It doesn't take long to find places full of people in hats and boots with big belts or camo caps and gun racks. I saw more rednecks at a recent Brad Paisley show 45 minutes outside of Chicago than I saw on my most recent trip below the Mason-Dixon line. And even the cities are packed with country fans.

Its a red region thing

And for some a rejection of rap and r'n'b thing,

he'll be on AC Limits stream tonite, 9 PM EST yes Ma'am:

http://www.youtube.com/user/AustinCityLimitsTV?app=desktop

http://klru.vo.llnwd.net/o36/acl_homepage/SturgillSimpson_slide.jpg

@TwangNation @SturgillSimpson @acltv lead player trippin on "Long White Line" yay And now ditto on very electric bluegrassActually enunciating too: "Lawd that her-oi-n (heroine?)dee-stroyed me."

"Sick of that bank, cain't take no more crank."

"Medicine Springs," excellent

wooooow

MN State Fair this year: Merle Haggard, Kris Kristoferson, and Sturgill Simpson

fuckin' good times there.