![]() Taylor conceived the name Hiss Golden Messenger for the folk. “You gotta let someone in,” as he puts it on the title track. Hiss Golden Messenger, led by Durham-based songwriter MC Taylor, will be the featured act that day, scheduled to perform at 8:05 p.m. All those musical references can help make it seem like Quietly Blowing It is offering prophetic wisdom even when Taylor is merely just trying to write himself out of hard times. Golden and glistening, subtle and subdued, Hiss Golden Messengers Quietly Blowing It is a heartfelt and sincere reflection of the present moment: Built off inner turbulence, external turmoil, and our shared search for balance amid loss, fracture, and change, its an intimate and nuanced soundtrack to getting by. On Quietly Blowing It he embraces his role as roots synthesizer, conjuring and quoting everyone from Sly Stone and Curtis Mayfield to Rod Stewart and John Prine. įaced with a period of prolonged seclusion, Taylor turned, as ever, to his record collection. But Taylor has grown immensely as a melodicist and arranger (he self-produced this album) in the ensuing decade, and the LP, which features contributions from longtime companions like Josh Kaufman and Scott Hirsch, is full of the collaborative warmth of recent Hiss landmarks like Heart Like a Levee. On “It Will If We Let It,” Taylor reflects on the cruel selfishness that artists can so easily inflict on their loved ones: “Were you happy?/I ignored it/I was telling/other stories.”Īs one might expect from a record made during a time of intense isolation, much of the music on Quietly Blowing It feels solitary, subdued, and contemplative, calling to mind, at times, the cloistered folk of earlier Hiss records like 2012’s Poor Moon. He does this with the most concise, cutting couplets of his career: On “Glory Strums (Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner),” jogging becomes an occasion for deep, dark self-reflection (“I know that there’s good in me/Why’s it such a hard time?”). ![]() Taylor has always excelled at turning everyday moments into occasions for unfussy existential reflection.
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