At thirty, MC Taylor looks back, he wrote songs “like obituaries on gravestones”. Five years later, looking in the rear-view mirror, he says: “I can see everyone who gave up in search of something easier and not so heartbreaking.” He himself has not given up on the long road to more lightness and joie de vivre. Even “Terms Of Surrender,” which he described in 2019 as “my therapy and my church,” countered the lash of personal demons with a confident “Happy Birthday, Baby.” And now, at almost fifty, the trip of the Southerner by choice from California culminates in a Hiss Golden Messenger album that bears his good news in the title and on the cover, but above all finds it embodied in the music itself.
Pretty irresistible
It starts out slightly skeptical when Taylor talks about waiting for the masterpiece in “20 Years And A Nickel” and includes the self-reproach that maybe he wasn’t smart enough. The realization remains more important: “Ain’t no straight down the line, crooked things don’t lie.” And then “I Saw The New Day In The World” sweeps away all doubts when it breaks into this groove after a retarding intro , which will still be carried away by wind instruments. Pretty irresistible.
That sets the tone. Little Feat could hardly have done the second-line beat of the title track any better, “Shinbone” is reminiscent of the Boz Scaggs from the days of “Silk Degrees” with its subtle funky note. And above all, but not only in “California King” a Grateful Dead vibe likes to unfold. Not so in the driving “Feeling Eternal”, which tries to stay on track of this suspicion, which may have been felt here and there, while in “The Wondering” Taylor is only quietly surprised that he always is still here. “Jump for joy, see where it gets ya,” he recommends. Hope doesn’t always cloud the view—sometimes it just springs from a very realistic desire to jump for joy.
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