the Sturgill Simpson c/d

for those of us without the patience for the rolling country thread

lol this was supposed to say The Sturgill Simpson thread

but I guess we can also discuss THE Sturgill Simpson

like him, wish he'd enunciate better

Yeah, after many of my friends raving about him, when I got around to hearing him he's kinda like honky tonk Eddie Vedder.

He writes better lyrics than vedder ever did.

His cover of "The Promise" is stunning.

Hard or soft 'G'?

Hard

Ta. Liking Metamodern Sounds on first listen

Yeah it's pretty great

Just got it the other day myself. Not disappointed.

"Yeah, after many of my friends raving about him, when I got around to hearing him he's kinda like honky tonk Eddie Vedder."

thanks for ruining the recod for me now!

I liked it a lot when I first heard it, and I guess I still do, but it kind of feels like he uses the exact same songwriting trick on every song.

That thing where the verse sticks on the I with a little V7 thrown in and then the chorus comes a-roarin in on the IV

he uses the exact same songwriting trick on every song

hallmark of classic songwriting

well, few country singers have the Gene Clark/Parsons talent.

i think the production is somewhat too clean and upfront.

still, it's better than most of the genre

Yeah I found it really refreshing when I first got into it, then I just bored of it quickly because it felt so samey. But it has a great sound and some great lyrics.

thanks for ruining the recod for me now!

Haha sorry, I'm not even entirely sure where my Vedder comparison came from! Sturgill's not yarly at all so much as mumbly. There's definitely stuff about him I like though.

i have found myself returning more to the last one even though i normally have a little bit of a year-end-list mania that keeps me focused on new releases instead. probably he seems less awesomely fatalistic on the newer one otherwise i'd spin it.

wait ... hard G? is that really right?

I doubt it

rhymes with gurgle? c'mon now

http://www.pronouncenames.com/pronounce/sturgill

http://youtu.be/_70HJMikcBo?t=2m46s

dude's got pipes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eWJmN8D820

Simpson's guitarist is really good. I love the solo on this one. I'd have to figure they are using the studio echo chamber on the solo, being that is a famous one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK4UFSNGRdE

FYI I live in Kentucky where this guy is a something of a local hero and I've never heard it pronounced any way other than to rhyme with 'Virgil.'

Album is great, hope he continues in the 'Reptilian overlords and DMT' mode, and hope he keeps whoever is playing lead guitar on this thing, damn.

Yeah his lead player is siiiiick as fuuuuuck

good interview with the guitarist: http://www.thefader.com/2014/09/18/another-country-interview-laur-joamets-sturgill-simpsons-estonian-guitarist

sturgill's a damn good guitarist too.

opening for Willie seems like a no-brainer

i've been off the country wavelengths for a while but just took a listen to this - as good as advertised!

his voice is very much in the classic merle mode and i can totally dig it

as anyone points out, correctly, he sounds a LOT like waylon

i'm not even a drug fiend but the lyrics to turtles all the way down are fantastic

estonian dude is becoming an american pretty quick when he says things like "amen to that"

next interview he'll be all "you're darn tootin!"

There must be a hundred guitar pickers in Nashville muttering 'coming over here, taking our jobs' like some UKIP neanderthal in a dead English seaside town...

saw these guys open for Willie Nelson last night and they were straight fire. Laur Joamets is indeed an amazing guitarist, he was very much the star of the show, although Sturgill is a pretty sick guitarist too.

Xpost There seem to be a lot of Aussies in Nashville.

i like him fine, but i'm reactionary wrt his rise in popularity - a) i'm not so fond of the voice (nor waylon's, of which he's too derivative), and b) he's caught too much of the dudebro-ish fetish for rock-enough-to-not-be-uncool "outlaw"/druggy country males that usually extends to dreck like Hank 3 and rarely crosses the gender barrier

i'm kind of a fan but he's not as good as probably a dozen other current country artists i can think of off the top of my head tbh

and the backlash begins

I think he's great. He's a great musician, his band is great, I like his singing and I like the songs he covers along with his originals. I like Waylon, and I like that he is not afraid to sound like Waylon. I don't get a dudebro vibe from him at all, if anything there's sort of a jam band thing going on at times.

i'm kind of a fan but he's not as good as probably a dozen other current country artists i can think of off the top of my head tbh

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Wednesday, December 31, 2014 6:19 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

want this list

i think it's right to be wary of the "i hate all current country music, but i like this" line that so often accompanies praise of sturgill simpson, but that has very little or nothing to do with sturgill simpson.

i'm a little amazed that a country fan can dislike waylon's voice (see benbbag above), but i have enough non-acquired tastes to give it a pass, i suppose. (btw christgau didn't like waylon's voice much either.) but i think waylon's voice is a thing of beauty, and as much as i love strugill simpson, he can't (yet) approach it in subtlety and flexibility.

I'm a country fan always suspicious of Waylon. Not hard. A fair amount of outlaw bathos.

Btw this guy closer to early eighties "Big City" Hag.

I'll totally cop to not being a country fan and being hardly familiar with Waylon and having never heard of Sturgill Simpson prior to last night. Still was a good show though...

i guess i go so deep with waylon -- i think i have every LP of his, at least up until the late 80s -- that i forget about the whole outlaw thing, which is really not a huge part of his oeuvre all told, even if it defined his public persona for a lot of people.

watch this and see if you don't love it -- his singing, the drumming, his minimalist guitar solo, everything:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1-_cZoUOEE

heard a song off this oof really bad like Black Keys pretending to be ZZ Top sounded awful like all those Black Keys records do

I haven't listened yet but I'm worried, since I heard the tail end of Sound Opinions yesterday, and both Jim *and* Greg were raving about it, and iirc Jim called it, and I paraphrase, the most radical country record since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which made me barf a little.

Guardian and Observer both reviewed the lp this weekend.
Don't remember noticing him before. Just listened to the first track of the lp described as psychedelic in friday's review and I think it's pretty awesome. Guitar is great anyway and vocals do seem to go back to traditional or at least outlaw country which si pretty great.
Must look into him further.

Guardian on Friday
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/26/sturgill-simpson-sound-fury-review-countrys-outlaw-catches-fire

Observer
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/29/sturgill-simpson-sound-and-fury-review-netflix-manga-film

It's the kind of record that will get great reviews and then be totally forgotten

I expect anyone who calls this a country record still thinks Taylor Swift is a country artist.

He's not playing in those fertile fields anymore.

https://i.imgur.com/VO5RLEP.jpg

my review of this album after listening to about 15 seconds: sounds like kings of leon and the mixing is shit

ice cold

I totally thought Kings of Leon too.

Finally listening, sounds okay to me, if maybe a little too 1990s. Would have been cool if he went totally radical and paid RZA to produce or something. Does sound like the sort of album to be totally missed or forgotten and rediscovered years later.

Yeah, I'm digging this, it's fun.

my review of this album after listening to about 15 seconds: sounds like kings of leon and the mixing is shit

Also I appreciate that he wants to lay down a groove or whatever but it feels like I’m being really n over by a train.

Does sound like a Fridmann production, even if it's not.

I can’t believe I had this much nostalgia for Don Felder’s theme for Heavy Metal, or that movie.

Well, yeah.

What is this it’s so bad.

Still think the best thing he ever did was his npr tiny desk concert

Oh man first impression this is bad but I feel the lure of the embarrassment creeping in... I'm soulseeking it.

This disco song "A Good Look", jeez...

This is bad.

watched the film today.
was weird how the end credits kick in, and then after them the so called story is finished, and yet there are visual references to how it ends within earlier sections.
basically, the timeline of the film is an absolute mess.

oh, and i thought i would be all over the music given the AP review, but nah, i've got zz top albums, i'm good.

That album cover looks very stoner rock.

It looks steinmanish, a gargoyle and a girl in ragged clothes wouldn't have looked out of place.

I have a feeling that in 20 years there will be people claiming this album was good.

Well, actually, there's people saying it right now (personally I'm still on the fence)

No need to wait, I've seen multiple people claiming its good right now! Haven't heard it myself yet, waiting for my copy to show up. Can't say I'm thrilled with what I've read about it so far but waiting to judge for myself. (xpost)

Haven't heard it yet, but is this album as bad as The Dead Don't Die? That was the biggest try hard failure of the year on film

Would make sense because he wrote the titular song that is referenced in the film way too many times.

I could see him releasing some de-lectrified of this in six months, just stripped-down versions of the same songs.

i don't think it's terrible, but it's clearly meant to be experienced live. maybe the songs wil lbe able to breathe if freed from the auerbach-aping production

He's recorded 2 albums of bluegrass versions of his tunes, releasing them this fall. Here he's playing them live forn the first time, i get extremely happy seeing this! Excited about those albums.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO73im4J2sU&t=2390s

Looking fwd to those. He takes his record collection personally, maybe especially on this 'un, which made my Nashville Scene Top Ten---ballot comments:

i'm a sucker for gleaming pop-country, sez a fellow Marenite. Wal now, have you heard Sturgill's Sound and Fury yet? I just did, and right off, seems like this ZZ Rex electro-pop-boogie, sometimes also reminding me of Neil and the Trans Band (more the show tapes than studio album), might suit you too. It's much less windbaggy than I feared---and the non-pedantic retro detailing, commercial inclusiveness x righteous fencepost grievances x deserty-hot-cold broodiness, also that voice, keep it all country or countryoid. Also 'ppreciate how he keeps twisting the dial into another track at just the right moment, or close enough. It's another hard candy Christmas alright.

Cuttin' Grass is out now!

pretty close:

I could see him releasing some de-lectrified of this in six months, just stripped-down versions of the same songs.

― ... (Eazy), Tuesday, October 1, 2019 9:17 AM (one year ago)

man i really love Cuttin Grass - his voice sounds so good alongside the arrangements

I guess Sound and Fury somehow has fans among Grammy voters? (Best Rock Album nominee.)

I like the new album!

his cod zz top really sucks ass imo

what does that mean? is he on the call of duty soundtrack?

Cod reggae is widely defined as reggae that is "inauthentic" and lacks the soul of authentic reggae that comes from Jamaica. It's widely used for reggae made by white people, though black artists have also made cod reggae (Maxi Priest).

have not heard that phrase before, thanks

huh, that surprises me given how long you've been on ILX wading with Britishers

not pescatarian enough waters i guess

Hah! New Cuttin' Grass volume is out today. A bit more adventurous, a lot shorter, sounds real good

omg this version of "Call to Arms" !

it's a freaker!

Nothing about his Willie Nelson style concept record (which also happens to feature ol' Willie himself)? It's great, pretty much same lineup as the Cuttin' Grass sessions afaict.

it is really good!

so do i have this right? Stu:
- made a couple real good records on his own
- got signed to a big label
- got pissed off at that label
- spent a bunch of the label's money flying to Japan a few times to make an anime film to go alongside his "fuck my label" album
- said "fuck my label" and got out of his deal (can't remember if he got dropped or the deal was up)
- went home and made three good bluegrass records with basically the best pickers in the world

that's pretty badass

That's essentially what I understand.

The bluegrass albums are ridiculously good and were way underrated last year, especially Vol. 2. The new one is his most reverent effort to date, drawing on old trail and cowboy music, bluegrass, and traditional country and western. His singing's never been better, too. Can't fail with a song about a good boy dog but "Juanita" is probably my favorite.