Of course country-traditional ten-gallon-hat pedal steel guitar and deeply funky big-soul-band horns go together. Of course they do. This not-at-all-apparent fact feels patently obvious after a single listen to this album, and yet I\u2019ve never heard it pulled off quite like this before.<\/p>\n
It should be no surprise that the alchemist behind this combination of science and magic is noted Nashville iconoclast Sturgill Simpson, a man who\u2019s made it abundantly clear to country music\u2019s powers that be that he simply won\u2019t be caged by anyone else\u2019s expectations of him, not ever. <\/p>\n
Now take a deep breath and repeat after me: A Sailor\u2019s Guide To Earth<\/i> is a progressive-country-soul-funk concept album. And while it stumbles here and there in its manic efforts to clear every hurdle on the entire musical infield, when it hits its stride, it blows the rest of the pack away. It\u2019s the polar opposite of formula: pure balls-out music-making infused with the kind of energy and commitment that every coach in the land wishes they could bottle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWelcome To Earth (Pollywog)\u201d opens things up in full-on Garth Brooks mode, with big melodramatic vocals and a slightly overcooked string arrangement triple-underlining the significance of the moment as Simpson greets his newborn son. Then at 2:45 of this 4:53 number, Simpson executes a 90-degree left turn and kicks into full-blown, horn-and-organ driven gospel-funk tent revival. <\/p>\n
Simpson follows this gutsy hybrid up by breaking it in two for the next two tracks. First you get \u201cBreakers Roar,\u201d a very pretty and decidedly philosophical acoustic ballad, and then we dive directly into the rollicking country-gospel-soul of \u201cKeep It Between The Lines.\u201d Throw together twangy slide guitar, a fat horn section, a dollop of Louisiana funk sauce in the rhythm section and a sassy barroom-bad-boy lyric and you\u2019ve got the funkiest damned country song you could ever ask for. <\/p>\n
The clever \u201cSea Stories\u201d runs closer to straight up country-rock, though the organ and piano have a gospel-y feel at times. \u201cSetting out on them high seas \/ Feels just like being born,\u201d sings Simpson, before he admits \u201cI\u2019ve got sea stories \/ They\u2019re all true \/ They might seem a bit far-fetched \/ But why would I lie to you.\u201d It\u2019s a punchy number that also sneaks in a message at the end. <\/p>\n
The midpoint of the album is where Simpson throws his biggest 12-6 curveball, remaking Nirvana\u2019s thundering, sarcastic \u201cIn Bloom\u201d as a pure country ballad, fiddle and slide leading the way as Simpson turns the song on its head, replacing scorn with empathy by adding a single phrase to a key line as he sings of a fan who \u201cDon\u2019t know what it means \/ To love someone.\u201d (Simpson claims this was simply a mistake resulting from him mis-hearing the original lyric\u2026 if true, it was a damned good mistake.) \u00a0<\/p>\n
Next up is a number that ends up feeling even more out of place. \u201cBrace For Impact (Live A Little)\u201d feels like a lost Bad Company number, a thumping, arena-sized blues-rocker full of coiled tension; when the oppressive \u201980s synth comes in over the discordant slide notes, well, chances are you\u2019re either going to hate it or tip your hat to the man with the biggest cojones in the room. After that Simpson steers back toward more familiar waters, decorating the midtempo pledge of faith \u201cAll Around You\u201d with sweeping slide, sweet horns and a big sax solo before going full Garth on you with the string-heavy love ballad \u201cOh Sarah.\u201d<\/p>\n
Closer \u201cCall To Arms\u201d lives up to its rabble-rousing title, a raging anti-war, anti-Hollywood, anti-all-authority battle cry that rides into town astride a galloping rhythm and steadily accelerates into a full-tilt country-soul-funk jam, putting a giant exclamation mark on an album full of them.<\/p>\n
With A Sailor\u2019s Guide To Earth<\/i>, Sturgill Simpson tries to answer a question that it seems has never occurred to anyone else to ask: what would it sound like if Merle Haggard, Garth Brooks, James Brown and Sly Stone made an album together? I don\u2019t really know, myself, but I get the feeling Sturgill does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":33046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9957],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-44830","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-sturgill-simpson","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44830"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}