Hiss Golden Messenger has announced details of his new album Quietly Blowing It, set for release on June 25th via Merge Records. After his last release, 2019’s Terms of Surrender, it comes as no surprise that there’s already a stirring excitement about this new release. In his review of his last album, Matt McGinn declared in the opening review sentence: “For me, it happens once in a blue moon, that I’m completely hooked on an album within a few bars of its opening track”, in his words, “…the album opener has just blown through me, transforming me from a gutter-ball to a potential ten pin striker.”
Will this new release carry the same weight? Well, if it’s a good indication – the soulful first single “Sanctuary” (shared here) has spent the last three weeks at #1 on the Americana Radio Singles Chart. We get to hear a second helping via “If It Comes in the Morning” on which the wonderful Anaïs Mitchell helped him out on a verse (more on below). It is accompanied by another video directed by the globetrotting Saleem J. Reshamwala and his team better known as The KidEthnic – it was shot in Oxford, NC, and features actor, playwright, and activist Mike Wiley in the lead.
Bandleader/songwriter M.C. Taylor:
“‘If It Comes in the Morning’ was a song that was written in the spring and early summer of 2020. The country was on fire, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘What comes next?’” says Taylor. “Initially, I didn’t know how much hope to include in the song—I wasn’t feeling particularly hopeful myself in that moment—but I felt that it was important to remember that whatever happened, most of us were going to be fortunate enough to be given another day in which to enact what I feel are the most important and fundamental parts of being alive: joy, love, peace, the willingness to keep moving forward whether the cards fall in our favor or not. And in remembering, at least, that these feelings exist, I suppose it became a song of hope. The Staple Singers and Curtis Mayfield were very good at writing these kinds of songs, and I suppose I was looking to their music as inspiration for ‘If It Comes in the Morning.’ When I got stumped on a verse, I called my friend Anaïs Mitchell, and she got me straightened out. I’m very thankful for her help.”
They say the compassion, empathy, and genuine sentiment of Hiss Golden Messenger’s music have never been better suited for a time than right now. We’re looking forward to it.
Pre-order Quietly Blowing It HERE now on CD, LP, and metallic blue Peak Vinyl (which also includes an exclusive Hiss Golden Messenger newsprint poster) wherever records are sold.