If you were ever called upon to argue the case for popular music as art, a Josh Joplin Group album would make a solid Exhibit A. <\/p>\n
Joplin started out more than 30 years ago as an aspiring folksinger and teenaged busker, graduated to solo coffeehouse gigs, assembled a trio, and made a series of indie albums in the \u201990s. A major break came when fellow Atlanta singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins\u2014in the process of breaking nationally himself\u2014agreed to produce and release Joplin\u2019s 1999 album Useful Music<\/i> on his SMG label. Whereupon Artemis Records swooped in to repackage and reissue Useful Music<\/i> with a sparkling new track produced by the Talking Heads\u2019 Jerry Harrison: \u201cCamera One<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cCamera One\u201d became the first independent single in the history of the AAA chart to hit #1, sending Joplin and group on a rocket ride around the world and onto Letterman<\/i>. However, when Useful Music<\/i>\u2019s follow-up, the witty Elvis Costello-influenced The Future That Was<\/i>, failed to deliver a hit single, a familiar story played out: Artemis dropped them, and the Group broke up.<\/p>\n That was hardly the end of the story, of course, because songwriters who\u2019ve earned that label have this funny habit: they keep writing songs. Working with various configurations of friends, collaborators, and labels, Joplin would release four more albums over the next 20-plus years: Jaywalker <\/i>(2005), Among The Oak & Ash<\/i> (2009), The Devil Ship<\/i> (2013) and Figure Drawing<\/i> (2023). <\/p>\n Still, his primary focus across those two decades was on fatherhood. With his daughter Lomie now a college graduate, Joplin returns to music full force on GpYr<\/i>, delivering a rangy and powerful set of typically artful songs with support from a number of familiar faces from Useful Music<\/i> \/ The Future That Was<\/i> days (Geoff Melkonian, Allen Broyles, Eric Taylor, Ani Cordero), joined by longtime friends and supporters like Grammy-winning producer Lorenzo Wolff (Taylor Swift), guitarist Wes Langlois, and, for one track, Lomie herself.<\/p>\n GpYr <\/i>opens strong with the punch of \u201cColored Copies,\u201d whose hard-strummed verses charge ahead to this exuberant chorus: \u201cAnd if you insist \/ How can I resist? \/ Love is like nothing else is.\u201d The latter being the first in a series of mantra-like observations embedded in these songs, reminders to self and others of what\u2019s really important in life. It\u2019s an evolution that we hopefully all go through over time, that acquisition of perspective.<\/p>\n The rambunctious breakup song \u201cThat\u2019s It! You Ghosted Me,\u201d besides its witty title, features another mantra: \u201cWhen it hurts you, it hurts me too,\u201d a chorus that feels almost like an invocation. Then \u201cOne More Someone\u201d offers a poignant, wistful tune directed to \u201cOne more someone I\u2019m gonna miss.\u201d It\u2019s an elegy of sorts, about the crossroads you sometimes find yourself reaching in life when you\u2019ve been really close to someone, but your paths are about to diverge.<\/p>\n The album\u2019s first single \u201cGoodbye Berlin\u201d is a driving number harnessing the visceral thrill of first experiencing that unique city, a 21st century nexus for modern art of all kinds. In places this wonderfully thrummy rocker calls back to \u201cCamera One\u201d in its sense of space and drama and urgency. If that wasn\u2019t enough, Joplin anchors the chorus on this brilliant rhyme: \u201cArrivals, departures \/ It doesn\u2019t matter whose heart hurts.\u201d<\/p>\n