Like the best moments of Simpson’s back catalogue, Sound and Fury is pissed. It feels like they did it too: Simpson’s vocals are set low in the mix, fighting for air over jarring synth, a dense rhythm section and walls of guitar noise that don’t let up for forty minutes straight.
Recorded on vintage equipment at the McGuire Motor Inn in Waterford, Michigan, of all places, it sounds like Simpson, with co-producer John Hill, and long-time band members-Chuck Bartels on bass, Bobby Emmett on keys, and Miles Miller on drums-set out to rupture as many speakers as they could, over two weeks of broken strings, blown tubes and bloody snares. Living out in the woods in Southeast Tennessee, playing only for himself. “Nobody bother, cause I’m over it all.”
At any moment, the album gives the impression that Simpson would be fine walking away from it all. Instead, the album opens with instrumental track ‘Ronin’, five minutes of mid-tempo guitar leads following an Alex Jones clip announcing “mounting evidence of a conspiracy of global scale”. There is virtually no reference to the public’s perception of Simpson’s prior work. This switch makes Sound and Fury all the more interesting. “Think it’s time to switch up the sound.” He and his band have been playing this Hoyt Axton country-funk compilation sound relentlessly: extending fan-favorites like ‘Brace For Impact’ into 10-minute drawn-out guitar solo jams as if they were playing for themselves only to empty bottles on creaky floors. But those who have seen Simpson perform over the last couple years won’t be surprised. “Gonna ride off into the sunset, while it all burns to hell behind me.”įor many though, Sound and Fury will not be the album they were hoping for. Though it may be the landscape High Top Mountain excavated, the scene has changed, and it’s clear Simpson wants nothing to do with it. As more and more acts are hiring steel players again, wearing Nudie suits, referencing Waylon, it’s starting to feel a little contrived. Another Country album wouldn’t have cut through the new noise from Nashville the same way it once did. Simpson’s pivot from Country to full-on Rock and Roll feels like the necessary move for a guy hell-bent on laying down his own tracks.
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Meanwhile, much of popular music has put down the guitar and a straight ahead rock album called Sound and Fury (New Elektra), full of whole step bends and pentatonic scales, feels out of left-field. Fast forward a few years, and we’re in a golden age of independent country music-Metamodern has become a kind of Nevermind. Felt even cooler to be listening to them.
Things turned around.Īround that time, in 2014, a pair of unrepentant country albums felt like the most rebellious thing a guy could do. But for whatever reason this weird purple album with a space turtle on the cover caught my eye. Living overseas, feeling disconnected from home, I put music on the backburner, focused on work. Metamodern Sounds in Country Music came into my life at a low point. I’m not sure I’m the right guy to do an objective Sturgill Simpson review.