Make Like A Shovel: Hiss Golden Messenger

This edition of Make Like A Shovel features Hiss Golden Messenger, an otherworldly North Carolina-via-California folk/rock/country/shamanistic collective led by M.C. Taylor and Scott Hirsch. Put un-simply: Hiss Golden Messenger create an atmosphere of ethereal and profound musical beauty where Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O’Connor meet in a misty graveyard in my dreams to discuss life, God and love while listening to records by a band that sounds like J.J. Cale fronting American Beauty/Workingman’s Dead-era Grateful Dead. Put simply: Hiss Golden Messenger are making some of the most thoughtful, rewarding and unique music being produced today. Some guy named David Bowie captured Hiss Golden Messenger’s aura magnificently when he opined that their sound was that of, “Mystical country, like an eerie yellowing photograph.” (Hey that’s pretty good, someone get this Bowie kid an internship.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR-n_FRoJaM

I’m often sent 40 or so albums (at least) a week “for my consideration” and as a music obsessive who wants to listen to everything, this pleases me greatly. As such, it’s rare that a record or a band can truly stick with me for an extended amount of time the way Hiss Golden Messenger has in recent weeks. I’d loved Bad Debt (2010), Lateness of Dancers (2014) and Southern Grammar (2015) immediately upon hearing them, but my move across the country and subsequent rush of catching up pushed the band from the fore of my mind until this summer’s Pickathon. As I stood there in the Happy Valley woods, watching this haunting amalgamation of everything from the above influences to Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison, to the very essence of the natural world itself, I knew Hiss Golden Messenger would never stray far from my consciousness again. To borrow a phrase from the philosopher Rust Cohle, it seemed to me that Hiss Golden Messenger were out there mainlining the secret truths of the universe, and we were all lucky enough to bear witness.

Beyond the band’s excellent latest releases on Merge Records, a perfect example of Hiss Golden Messenger’s range occurs at the halfway point of 2012’s Lord I Love The Rain. The first six of the album’s 11 cuts are sparse, featuring only Taylor’s notable, ghostly croon and guitar work. The last five songs feature full band arrangements, each different and interesting, that suddenly materialize from the Southern ether and challenge our notion of what a band that plays “roots” music is supposed to sound like. “Born on a Crescent Moon” announces this abrupt sea change with all the subtlety of a screaming nun holding up a burning crucifix in a Tijuana whorehouse. The swirling, chaotic, saxophone-aided instrumental rises like a lustful moon through the lovely, subdued songs from the record’s delicate first half. The humid, funky song mischievously toys with the listener’s ears, beguiling them like a lost lover who you know is terrible for you, but God damn if she doesn’t look impossibly good dancing in that sundress! Did this haunting folk record just turn into an Isaac Hayes jam? What happened to the all the lithe introspection? In the hands of a lesser talent, a move so brazen could easily fall into the realm of self parody, but in Taylor and Hirsch’s able clutches, the gamble is spellbinding.

Much of the visceral power of Cormac McCarthy’s writing lies in the Pulitzer Prize winner’s ability to transport you, body and soul, to the environments he conjures. You taste the grit from the sand in your teeth as though you yourself were traversing the blood-soaked arroyos of the Texas/Mexico border with John Grady Cole, The Kid or Llewelyn Moss. You can feel the otherworldly, primal evil of his malicious characters, and the blindly bright glimpses of empathy and selfless love that others exude. Taylor’s words (and music as a whole) possess much of the same power. Listening to Hiss Golden Messenger gives a true sense of the North Carolina atmosphere in which it was created. You can feel the dampness of a strangely misty night in the woods, hear the crack of fresh logs on the campfire and the familiar clink and glug of a passed bottle of bourbon. You can close your eyes and almost smell the mossy stones at the bottom of the softly bubbling Haw River.

The overall atmosphere is very much “of the Earth,” with a natural beauty tinged with an unidentifiable, but relatable, melancholy. The evocative instrumentals helping achieve this sound are almost pained, like the music is awakening something mystical in stiff, ancient statues in a smoky antebellum graveyard that begin slowly cracking and creaking to life as if Pan himself moved to the South and gave up his trusty flute for a guitar. To help achieve this effect, Taylor specially tunes his guitar to garner a spectrum of emotions.

As much as Taylor and Hirsch’s gorgeous soundscapes evoke the natural world, Taylor’s lyrics concern the spiritual quandaries that plague all thinking people who ponder matters of the soul. Lust, love, God and death all figure prominently, as does the intensity of the love he feels for his wife and children, and subsequently how scary it can be at times to face something so powerful (“I love you most of all, but I’m terrified” he sings on “Far Bright Star”). References to the Bible abound in Taylor’s lyrics, and his thoughtful and complex journey into the matters of the soul are played out on his records, which makes sense when one considers Taylor earned a graduate degree in folklore from the University of North Carolina. Raised in Southern California, Taylor moved to North Carolina for a fresh start to pursue his degree after his band the Court and Spark (Hirsch was also in this band) broke up, leaving Taylor discouraged and wondering if his career in music was over.

“It would be a great way to restart my brain, which had just atrophied from years of weed and drinking and drugs,” Taylor told The Washington Post. “I just partied through my 20s in a really intense way, and I felt like I had nothing to show for it.”

Unencumbered by the weight of expectations, Taylor sat down in his kitchen with a tape recorder and let the songs that would become Hiss Golden Messenger’s debut, Bad Debt, flow through him while his newborn son slept in the other room. Inspired by his new home and family, and liberated by having no band members to answer to, Taylor’s beautiful, strange Southern Gothic musical endeavors flourished in a way that they never had before, and have shown no signs of stopping since.

“I was baptized Episcopalian, but my parents had a hard time with church, so I don’t really have that in my background,” Taylor told The Post. “But I’m not saying I don’t believe in God. I’m skeptical. And the people telling me God does exist don’t seem like reputable sources. I see God being used as a tool for violence and mayhem. Whether it’s the North Carolina GOP totally dismantling social services for low-income people and the elderly, or ISIS causing chaos, or Israel and Palestine killing each other over their prophets. It never seems like American Christians are ever following the teachings of Jesus as I understand them to be — and they’re not that difficult to understand. I don’t want to be dissuaded from this idea of belief by people who claim to be experts on Jesus Christ. But to me, they seem ignorant. So I’m trying to find this other way to faith. But I’m looking for a back door. All the common entrances seem incorrect.”

Man has long struggled with questions of morality, familial responsibility, love and what both God and the soul mean, and much of our most important and beautiful art centers on these subjects. But rarely has a contemporary artist, of any discipline, consistently made such an indelible impact in such an original and entertaining fashion as Taylor has. Here’s to Taylor and all the artists of his ilk, who continue the expeditions of the soul, in hopes that someone, or something, is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.