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54. Metamodern Sounds in Country Music - Sturgill Simpson (2014)

Country

Sturgill Simpson shouldn’t exist in this dimension. Listening to his music makes you wonder whether he’s popped in from another universe where country music never got popified and ruined in the years after the forefathers of the genre left the spotlight. It’s an odd dichotomy to hear a voice that’s so quintessentially country singing about experimenting with psychedelics, but it really shouldn’t be surprising. He’s an outlaw and he does as outlaws do, relating his exploits with such casual greatness that his talk of “reptile aliens” and “turtles all the way down” hardly seem unusual at all.

It’s funny that someone who is so undeniably country feels like such an outsider in the genre today. He’s a product of that bygone era where Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash battled their demons for everyone to hear and embraced a life on the outside of society looking in. There’s a heavy dose of harsh reality on Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, most of which you can picture Sturgill singing to himself alone at a bar while sunlight filters through the smoke-filled room. But for all of its unapologetic gloominess, the album feels more fun than depressing. And it rocks, hard. The closing track “It Ain’t All Flowers” melts away into an extended outro that showcases some of the “metamodern” alluded to in the album’s title. It’s a well executed combination of old and new that feels both familiar and fresh. Sturgill Simpson might just be the messiah that purist country fans have been waiting for.

*image; cover art for the album Metamodern Sounds in Country Music by the artist Sturgill Simpson