Hiss Golden Messenger – Jump for Joy (2023) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

Hiss Golden Messenger – Jump for Joy (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:56 minutes | 859 MB | Genre: Folk, Alt. Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Merge Records

It’s spring of 2023 in the North Carolina Piedmont, and songwriter and singer M.C. Taylor leader of the band Hiss Golden Messenger is feeling alive. Joyful. Eternal, he might say. For the Grammy-nominated musician, whose albums have traced an internal path through adulthood, fatherhood, spirituality, and depression for well over a decade, this is something new. “The tunes on Jump for Joy were composed in free moments throughout 2022, a year during which Hiss was on the road more or less constantly,” explains Taylor. “And perhaps because the post-pandemic energy out in the world felt so chaotic and uncertain, I found myself thinking a lot about the role that music has played in my life and how exactly I ended up in the rarefied position of leading a band and crew all over the globe through dingy graffiti-scrawled green rooms, venerated music halls, dust-blown roadside motels. Sometimes playing in front of 5,000; sometimes 200. Sleeping sitting up. Laughing until my stomach hurts. Not being able to fall asleep at 3 a.m. in some anonymous bed because my mind is spinning with anxiety or depression or adrenaline, or because my ears are still ringing. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, then robbing Paul to pay Peter back. Over and over again. It’s an outlaw life but one, I’m coming to realize, that makes me happy.”The songs that make up Jump for Joy the sharpest and most autobiographical that Taylor has written under the Hiss name read as a sort of epistolary, postcards between the present-day songwriter and his alias Michael Crow, a teenaged dreamer very much like Taylor himself, who trips his way through the 14 tunes that make up the record. In this way, Jump for Joy is a meditation on a life lived with art, and the ways that our hopes and dreams and decisions bump up against and, with a little bit of luck, occasionally merge with real life. “Creating this character became the way that I could explore these vulnerable, tender moments that were so decisive in my life, even if I didn’t know it at the time,” explains Taylor.

Produced by Taylor and engineered by longtime Hiss compatriot Scott Hirsch over two weeks in the late fall of 2022 at the fabled Sonic Ranch studio in Tornillo, TX, just a short walk from the Mexican border, Jump for Joy dances with joyful, spontaneous energy that feels like a fresh chapter in the Hiss Golden Messenger oeuvre. Taylor is accompanied throughout the album by his crack live band: guitarist Chris Boerner, bassist Alex Bingham, keyboardist Sam Fribush, and drummer Nick Falk, a collection of musicians that have helped make Hiss Golden Messenger’s live performances legendary affairs.

Tracklist:

1-01. Hiss Golden Messenger – 20 Years and a Nickel (03:09)
1-02. Hiss Golden Messenger – Alice (00:23)
1-03. Hiss Golden Messenger – I Saw the New Day in the World (03:20)
1-04. Hiss Golden Messenger – Shinbone (03:46)
1-05. Hiss Golden Messenger – Little Pink Church (00:53)
1-06. Hiss Golden Messenger – Jesus Is Bored (04:07)
1-07. Hiss Golden Messenger – Nu-Grape (03:28)
1-08. Hiss Golden Messenger – Feeling Eternal (03:24)
1-09. Hiss Golden Messenger – Jump for Joy (03:04)
1-10. Hiss Golden Messenger – The Wondering (03:56)
1-11. Hiss Golden Messenger – Palo Santo/Cloud Mesa (00:29)
1-12. Hiss Golden Messenger – California King (02:45)
1-13. Hiss Golden Messenger – My Old Friends (03:31)
1-14. Hiss Golden Messenger – Sunset on the Faders (03:33)

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