Looking back on pieces written during the pandemic – particularly those published in the first weeks of global doubt and uncertainty – it now seems like an era which is utterly forgotten. Barely half a decade has passed since hundreds of millions of people were confined to their homes, millions more died and the bargain with modern science that it can cure anything appeared broken, yet if you arrive from outer space it seems like it was just a ripple, a societal blip with few if any consequential outcomes.
You wander whether this current period in American history will ten years hence be seen in the same light, or if the impacts will be longer lasting. M C Taylor – AKA Hiss Golden Messenger – wrote his own accompanying notes to I’m People, a fascinating, not always lucid diatribe, the most telling segment of which is the contextualization of it in the midst of ‘The heartbreak and exhilaration, the absolute black comedy of being a person on this razor’s edge, this lion’s jaw, that is America’ then tempering that puckishness with simply ‘What other choice do we have than to be hopeful?’.
It is in turn a benign and then mischievous record, its sounds rooted in pastoral textures that deliberately come from no vintage capable of pinning down. This is a world of absolutes, the wager of Shaky Eyes casting revolutionary as ‘Crusading children go by’, whilst the gospel infused closer Depends On The River boasts cameos from Bruce Hornsby along with Iron And Wine‘s Sam Beam. At it’s sparkiest on the opener In The Middle Of It and the regretful rocker Last Orders, maybe our best hope for I’m People is that one day we look back at a good record made in a bad time.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 