The Scene

It must be such a pain in the ass to be labelled the saviour of country music. Yeah, sure, Sturgill doesn’t write songs about drinking beer on the back of a pick-up with a bunch of pretty ladies (with no agency of their own, naturally). But as soon as people start pinning expectations and hopes to him it becomes a real catch-22. Like, he broke out a couple years ago with ‘Metamodern Sounds in Country Music’, which was a freakin’ trip of a record. Psychedelic, spiritual and profound – sorta like a less evangelistic Luke the Drifter. It’s a side to country music that I’ve often wanted to hear explored more and this dude Sturgill strolls in out of the wilderness and drops a damn stunner.

Yet he did that by challenging the very boundaries and conventions of that music. Incorporating soul music, rock music, all sorts. If anything it wasn’t really on the country spectrum at all, more Gram Parsons’ Cosmic American Music ideal. And when you take that sonic rebellion and start mainstreaming it by calling him some messiah of honky tonk, well that’s just locking him in a box. It’s the opposite of how he made his name.

So it’s a good thing that Sturgill Simpson really doesn’t care. For his new one he’s gone even deeper into concept, taking his experiences living life on the road, away from friends and family, and incorporating that into this nautical idea of a sailor out at sea. It’s high concept. He’d just had a son when he was writing it and was feeling guilty being away and all that. Whatever the motivation, the idea is pretty poignant.

The Songs

Welcome To Earth (Pollywog) – The forbearer of all to follow, sonically, musically, emotionally, thematically.
Breakers Roar – Maybe the most likely to fit on Metamodern Sounds. Slow and incredibly open, pedal steel and a pulsing bass. Oh how the breakers roar…
Keep It Between The Lines – Sturgill’s Guide to Living delivered in what in another life might have been a lost Booker T & the MGs track.
Sea Stories – Back on the country boat. This one’s for the navy alums, lost without a paddle after finishing their terms. If you’re gonna send innocent folks out to fight a politician’s war, at least look after them when they get back.
In Bloom – You might have heard this one before, but not like this. A country dirge on steel guitar blooms (ha!) into full on southern soul. Weird at first coz of the familiarity but grows into one of the strongest here.
Brace For Impact (Live A Little) – The first single. Rocking more with a drum kit fit to burst and a strong chorus. Tambourine’s a nice touch.
All Around You – A bit of an old school R&B shuffle, complete with piercing guitar flicks. Pretty sweet sax solo in there too. Stunningly sung as well.
Oh Sarah – Upright bass and swooning strings. This is the emotional heart of the entire record, such a gorgeous track. Oh Sarah, that’s when I slide.
Call To Arms – Anti-war rave up. What’s it good for, absolutely nothing. Pour one out for the soldiers sent off to fight in the conflicts of the rich and who return to bugger all. Quick tempo with plenty of instrumental adornment.

The Vibe

Beginning with what initially sounds like crashing waves and a ringing bell but then rises into quite a heavy, grating synth sound, the nautical theme is definitely not ignored. But that fades abruptly into a beautiful piano line accompanied soon by Sturgill’s reverberated voice, those two elements selling the whole thing pretty nicely. There’s a high concept pattern going on around an incredibly sincere set of songs – even the Nirvana cover is done in earnest.

Those nautical noises, they return periodically. Keep It Between the Lines begins with what sounds like a team of rowers down in the galley, sweeping along, which suits the pragmatic, stay-safe advice of the track to follow. Simpson spent a bit of time in the navy as a young man andx

Singing for his son – for the most part – you know the heart’s gonna be on the sleeve as much as possible. As it happens, Sturgill is a fella that really doesn’t care about expectations or outside influences, this is hardly alternative country as the tastemakers have come to define it but it’s alternative in its intentions, that’s for damn sure. Just as his last album was too. As Sturgill’s joked with Metamodern Sounds, that album had the words ‘country music’ in the title and it still didn’t get recognised there.

If an album as seemingly personal as this one sounds difficult to get into, don’t worry. The songs strut or waltz with surefooted confidence and even the most direct lyrics are universal enough. Like, if the words are good enough for his son then he probably doesn’t mind you taking the odd nugget to live by either, ya know?

The Music

In some ways, this isn’t a country album at all – it’s a Memphis soul record. Just listen to the way the opening track gives way to this brass-filled, thumpingly rhythmic track… it may come delivered in a twang but that’s some Muscle Shoals instrumentation right there, buddy.

Those horns are legit too. It’s funny coz he utilises horns and strings but despite his country/bluegrass credentials (his first album, High Top Mountain, had more bluegrass elements) but rather than going the Nashville way with those things he’s gone all out Motown, Soul, Funk on the thing. Because of the country influence I still dig the Memphis sound thing I mentioned just before but as far as the horns go, he’s called in Brooklyn legends the Dap-Kings. Hearing Sturgill talk about it in interviews, the idea was to get those real heavy, street-level brass sounds, rather than the bright, shiny tunage that others settle for. Good call too, what it means is that the soul elements are never dominated, they don’t come off like cover songs or gimmicks. Hey, if you’re gonna do it you may as well do it properly.

But it ain’t all trumpets and brass. I didn’t even get into the strings there, which are always done pretty tastefully and often done for atmosphere too – at times the strings feel interchangeable with the pedal steel. Both are obviously used for melodic purposes but they also each capture that gentle swelling of waves on the shore, rising and falling as they gently flow unto the shore. And it goes without saying that most of these songs will have been written on an acoustic guitar, with the more traditional instrumentation getting its due all the same.

By the way, Simpson’s last long player was produced by Dave Cobb who is the country outsider’s go-to dude. Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, Shooter Jennings… even Wheeler Walker Jr all in the stocks. But for this one he produced it all himself and he does a lovely job too. This is an ambitious album and it sounds fantastic, covering a range of styles even in individual songs and they don’t sound sloppy in any way.

Revelations

Sturgill: “I knew I wanted to make a concept record in song-cycle form, like my favorite Marvin Gaye records where everything just continuously flows. I also wanted it to be something that when my son is older and maybe I'm gone, he can listen to it and get a sense of who I was. I just wanted to talk as directly to him as possible.”

The album was featured as a full stream on NPR with that First Listen thing they do and came with a note at the bottom: “At the artist's request, songs from this album cannot be played individually.” I like that. Commitment to the song cycle.

“I’ve been told you measure a man by how much he loves”

“Grandfather always said: ‘God’s a fisherman’”

“And when I get home it breaks my heart to see how much you’ve grown. All on your own.”

NY Times: Sturgill Simpson, a Genuine Alternative to Alt Country

“Bone breaks, and it heals. Oh but heartaches can kill. From the inside, so it seems. Oh I’m telling you it’s all a dream. It’s all a dream. It’s all a dream. It’s all a dream. It’s all a dream. It’s all a dream.”

“Do as I say, not as vie done. It don’t have to be like father like son”

“Memories make forever stain, still got salt running through my veins”

Apparently the line in the chorus of In Bloom, where Cobain sings ‘Don’t know what it means when I say…’, Sturgill just plain got the words wrong. He sings ‘Don’t know what it means to love someone’ and it was a complete accident but the altered lyrics suit so well. As such he had to write a pleading letter to the Cobain estate to allow him to use it.

Sturgill (because with a name like that, he deserves first-name basis) also did the theme tune for HBO’s Vinyl, which is a big departure from this album in a lot of ways, a wailing, tearing, shredding rock and roll tune. Plenty of arrow in the quiver for him.

Oh Sarah was a song initially cut and written back when he was with his band Sunday Valley, done for his wife of the same name. It’s like a renewal of vows, revisiting that these years later.

“Sometimes this life feels like a big old dream/I'm floating around on a cloud inside/When my cloud starts coming apart at the seams/Oh Sarah, that's when I slide”

Finale

One of A Sailor’s Guide’s best aspects is that despite the odds, it isn’t the schmaltzy, soap opera that it could have been, being as openly adoring as it is. Make no mistake, that’s an achievement right there. But then this is also a guy that just covered Nirvana and made it sound fresh and original so maybe there’s no underestimating Mr Simpson.

He didn’t even try to follow up Metamodern Sounds. He could have, and he’d have gotten another three or four decent albums out of that but instead he’s launched in a different direction and still landed on his feet. You do that and nobody’s gonna make the mistake of boxing you in as a straight country singer ever again. To be honest, if he didn’t have that accented twang in his voice then nobody would have done so here in the first place. I love me some Willie Nelson or Merle Haggard or, yes, Waylon Jennings (whose southern baritone was like the generational mirror of Sturgill’s own voice – even if Sturgill claims not to even listen to Waylon), but Sturgill Simpson isn’t doing that thing and he damn sure isn’t doing no Nashville jingles either.

What a beautiful thing when an artist is able to go so deep without compromise. What an even more beautiful thing when it pays off.