Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C Taylor will find out this weekend if his last LP, 2019’s Terms of Surrender, takes home the Best Americana Album at this year’s Grammy Awards. Even with that anticipation looming, the ever-prolific Americana artist has already set his sights on his next effort, as he’s today announced Quietly Blowing It. As a preview of the June 25th release, Taylor has shared “If It Comes in the Morning”.
Arriving via Merge, Quietly Blowing It was written during the spring and summer of the tumultuous 2020. Even before that year “rolled up on us like an existential mugger,” as Taylor himself puts it, he was feeling burnt out. He’d canceled an Australian tour in 2019, and left the road ready for “the time and space to mourn something, though I wasn’t sure what.” When he returned to writing in March of last year and the world turned upside down, he began addressing the chaos from a personal perspective.
In an essay entitled “Mourning in America,” Taylor wrote,
“As the specters of the coronavirus epidemic, mass civil rights protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by cops in Minneapolis, fires raging out of control on the West Coast, and the fractured presidential election roiled America, I wrote about things that felt important to bear witness to for myself: Class and money and work. Alienation,disorientation,miscommunication, and self-hatred. Climate change. And I wrote about the inverse of these things, too: Locating hope and inspiration in small moments and movements. Living productively. Making family. Finding and offering sanctuary. Time as a healing agent. I wrote to make sense and to begin the process of grieving and rebuilding in my own life.I’m not sure what the difference is between celebrating and mourning. I feel like I was doing both at the same time.”
Thus Quietly Blowing It is an introspective look at the extrospective insanity of the world. We heard some of that on early single “Sanctuary”, and Hiss Golden Messenger provides similar reflection on “If It Comes in the Morning”. With slowly contemplative horns and a gentle piano, Taylor looks forward to the answer of “What comes next?” with a cautious hope. “Will I be thankful/ If it comes in the morning?” he sings. “Will I be grateful?/ If it comes in the morning/ Lord, hear me cry/ I’m ready to try.”
Take a listen to the track via the video below. The clip was directed by KidEthnic and stars actor/playwright/activist Mike Wiley.
While the album is a highly personal affair, it isn’t a solitary one. Joining Taylor on the record are Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith of Dawes, The Lone Bellow’s Zach Williams, producer/musician/Bonny Light Horseman member Josh Kaufman, and guitar great Buddy Miller. Gregory Alan Isakov also co-wrote the track “Painting Houses”.
Pre-orders for Quietly Blowing It are available now. Find the album art and tracklist ahead.
Quietly Blowing It Artwork:
Quietly Blowing It Tracklist:
01. Way Back in the Way Back
02. The Great Mystifier
03. Mighty Dollar
04. Quietly Blowing It
05. It Will If We Let It
06. Hardlytown
07. If It Comes in the Morning
08. Glory Strums (Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner)
09. Painting Houses
10. Angels in the Headlights
11. Sanctuary
