It's time again for Iona’s Song of the Week; how time flies! This week’s choice comes from an American musician we have been following since 2016, when we came across his third album, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, which made its mark!
This album was followed up in 2019 by the astonishing Sound & Fury, a significant departure from his country roots, being a mixture of hard rock, psychedelica, blues, and funk! The album was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 63rd Grammy Awards, making the artist the first to be nominated for Best Rock Album and Best Country Album by the Grammy Awards. No mean feat!`
The album was self-produced, and the musician said that while making it, he listened to "a lot of hip-hop, and Black Sabbath, and the Cars, and old funk records and things." He also stated that while in Detroit, he was inspired after listening to Eminem to write "a bunch of mad shit-talking songs about how fucking awesome we are" but later began to think that what he and his band had produced was not "weird" enough, so came up with the idea to travel to Japan and "get the five most legendary animation directors in history together and get them all drunk and put them to competition to see who can outdo one another, and we'll just animate the whole fucking album". The album was later characterised as a "sleazy, steamy, rock 'n' roll record", and the artist called it his "most psychedelic" and "heaviest" work. Bobby Moore of The Boot described the album as "a collection of dystopian rock songs". Musically, Sound & Fury has been described by critics rock, psychedelic rock, boogie rock, and synth-rock. Not bad for a country singer, eh?!
When the band toured this album, they closed the Glasgow Celtic Connections on the 31st of January 2020, the last live gig we saw for a while!
I think that you will ascertain from the above that this week’s song is a deviation from the musician's standard oeuvre, and in many ways, that is why it has been selected. So, sit back, relax and enjoy Sturgill Simpson’s Mercury in Retrograde……(oh, and turn up the volume!)
留言