Sturgill Simpson
Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
2014
There’s a killer scene in one of the middle seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia when Danny DeVito’s abhorrent character, Frank Reynolds solemnly intones, “Well, I don’t know how many years on this Earth I got left… I’m gonna get real weird with it.” It’s a line that rhymes with a lyric on Sturgill Simpson’s “Living the Dream,” on which his narrator observes, “Ain’t no point in getting out of bed / If you ain’t living the dream… Oh, I don’t have to do a goddamn thing / Sit around and wait to die.”
What Simpson demonstrated on Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, the parent album of “Living the Dream,” is a commitment to not doing the first goddamn thing he doesn’t want to do. Moreover, the album proved that, when it comes to country music, what Simpson wants to do is get real weird with it.
With his band Sundy Best and then with his tremendous solo debut, High Top Mountain, Simpson had garnered favor with both independent-minded country music fans and with dogged traditionalists alike. While it was clear from the jump that Nashville wasn’t his scene– in a brilliant bit of early brand development, he busked on a street corner outside the arena where the CMA Awards were taking place inside– he was just as uneasy with the cult-like devotion of those who’d declared him the antidote to the Bro-country that was popular in the mainstream at the time. Rather than give that audience what it wanted– which was another iteration of High Top Mountain– Simpson approached his follow-up as an opportunity to push his sound in surprising and progressive new directions. And, just as significantly, to use his newfound clout to drag a genre that’s notoriously resistant to change along behind him.
With producer Dave Cobb doing career-best work at the mixing board, Simpson and his ace backing band crafted the sound that’s described perfectly by the album’s self-referential and audience-trolling title. The recording techniques and the contemporary indie-rock flourishes were tied to the immediate music scene, while elements of honky-tonk and cosmic country set the foundation for tbe project’s aesthetic. “And the boys and me, still working on the sound,” Simpson sings with a smirk on “Life of Sin,” letting it be known that, no, even this would not be his final form.
Truly, this would all scan as far too arch if the album’s songs weren’t good. But they are, to a one, steeped in genre know-how and Simpson’s thick drawl, and they’re heady, clever, and poignant in Simpson’s attempts to make sense of matters as insular as his own success story and as infinite as the cosmos itself. Whether he’s “thinking of the right words to say” on a just-lovely cover or “The Promise” or contemplating “the gateway in our minds that leads somewhere beyond this plane” (on opener “Turtles All the Way Down”), Simpson knows that a metamodern take on country music is the exact right medium for his line of questioning.
Additional Listening
- All of Simpson’s work is essential; as with Brandy Clark, Jason Isbell, and Miranda Lambert, he could’ve been represented here by several of his albums:
- High Top Mountain, a triumph of wild and wooly honky-tonk.
- A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, on which Simpson upped the ante on even the proggiest and most rock-leaning moments of Metamodern Sounds.
- Cuttin’ Grass, another stylistic pivot, which recasts songs from his catalog as bluegrass romps.
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