{"id":21,"date":"2014-12-21T18:16:18","date_gmt":"2014-12-21T18:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/?p=21"},"modified":"2014-12-31T18:42:09","modified_gmt":"2014-12-31T18:42:09","slug":"metamodern-sounds-in-country-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/metamodern-sounds-in-country-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Metamodern Sounds In Country Music"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a track from the record and a Tiny Desk Concert featuring Sturgill Simpson:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6gBV-Nzq7Pg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/w5cMqD0WqYE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2014\/05\/04\/307746474\/first-listen-sturgill-simpson-metamodern-sounds-in-country-music\">From NPR Music by Jacob Ganz<\/a>:<br \/>There are so many &#8220;whoa, stop&#8221; moments in the first three minutes of Sturgill Simpson&#8217;s second album. A few selected quotes, which Simpson delivers in a stretched-out Waylon croon: &#8220;I&#8217;ve seen Jesus play with flames &#8230; met the devil in Seattle &#8230; met Buddha yet another time,&#8221; &#8220;Don&#8217;t waste your time on nursery rhymes and fairy tales of blood and wine,&#8221; &#8220;Marijuana, LSD, psilocybin, DMT, they all changed the way I see,&#8221; and &#8220;There&#8217;s a gateway in our mind that leads somewhere out there beyond this plane \/ where reptile aliens made of light cut you open and pull out all your pain.&#8221; Wait, what?<\/p>\n<p>In case you need a clue as to where Simpson is coming from, the title comes in handy: <em>Metamodern Sounds in Country Music<\/em> nods to the genre-expanding Ray Charles classic <em>Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music<\/em>, and tells you he&#8217;s going to fold country&#8217;s conventions over on themselves as if he&#8217;s trying to create some kind of musical space-time portal. He shows up on the cover in a photo that looks as if it had been pulled out of a Civil War-era locket, with long hair and untrimmed mustache. The background, of course, is outer space. Here&#8217;s a list of the jobs held by the eight people Simpson thanks in the album&#8217;s credits: molecular biologist, psychonaut, science-fiction author, astronomer, theoretical physicist, psychopharmacologist and computer programmer. The way Simpson is gunning, he&#8217;s going to freak some people out.<\/p>\n<p>The funny thing is, <em>Metamodern Sounds in Country Music<\/em> is absolutely country, from the roadhouse-ready &#8220;Life of Sin&#8221; to the lonesome-skyline blues of &#8220;Voices&#8221; to the revival-tent call-and-response stomp of &#8220;A Little Light.&#8221; The two covers on the album are of Buford Abner&#8217;s &#8220;Long White Line&#8221; (which appeared on both Charlie Moore &#038; Bill Napier&#8217;s <em>Truckin&#8217; Favorites<\/em> and Aaron Tippin&#8217;s <em>In Overdrive<\/em>) and When in Rome&#8217;s 1988 hit &#8220;The Promise,&#8221; which appeared in the closing credits to <em>Napoleon Dynamite<\/em>. Both would sound at home at the Ryman.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing on <em>Metamodern<\/em> sounds forced; Simpson has perfected the trick of distilling classic country from many eras and moving away from it at the same time. (Don&#8217;t believe him in &#8220;Life of Sin,&#8221; when he sings, &#8220;The boys and me still working on the sound.&#8221;) That trick takes skill and affection for the history of the genre, as well as a willingness to stand alone. If nothing else, someone should give this guy a medal for coming up with the phrase, &#8220;You play with the devil, you know you&#8217;re going to get the horns.&#8221; But Simpson does things all over <em>Metamodern Sounds in Country Music<\/em> that seem familiar at first but blow your mind a little bit the second time you hear them.  <\/p>\n<div class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http:\/\/www.npr.org\/.<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.google-analytics.com\/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&#038;utmdt=First+Listen%3A+Sturgill+Simpson%2C+%27Metamodern+Sounds+In+Country+Music%27&#038;utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxODQzOTgwMDEyMTcyNjI4MTAxYWQyMw004)\"\/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a track from the record and a Tiny Desk&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","byline-sturgill-simpson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.kera.org\/kxt2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}