erasing clouds
 

Simon Joyner, Out in the Snow

review by dave heaton

Simon Joyner returns on his 12th or so LP, Out in the Snow, with his Leonard Cohen voice and Dylanesque style of epic but close-up storytelling. The album begins with an epic ghost story, the 10-minute “The Drunken Boat”, and really the whole album feels haunted, by memories, mistakes, loneliness. That’s in the song lyrics and the fabric of the music. Halfway through “The Arsonist”, there is an eerie break where silence, atmospheric noise, and an anxious hum intrude, pointedly after the line, “You’re alone / you can’t go home again.”

Other songs use lonesome voices, the silence of expectation, and a lush sound, of impeccably arranged instruments: bittersweet strings, sad piano, raw acoustic guitar. The lyrics powerfully touch on mortality, on time ticking past, turning acts of betrayal into secrets in the process. “Sooner or later time catches up with every criminal”, he sings on “Last Evening on Earth”, an apocalyptic blues. On “Ambulances”, he sings, “the future came / neither you or he could stop it / lying down in all of those ambulances.” Time is a force greater than any of us, and it’s not bringing good things.

There are moments of peace on the album, standing out as respites within all of the darkness. “Peace in My Time”, one is called. He hopes for “peace in my time / with a woman I know”. The album’s fourth song, “Sunday Morning Song for Sara”, is a lovely anecdote of waking up early, quietly waiting for a sleeping someone to wake up. Each sound, smell, and feeling is vivid. By focusing so intently on the moment, the song is evocative of so many bigger things at once, and none.

The title track is a song of moving on, and another epic in tone. It and the raucous final song, “Roll On”, bring the album to an end on a note of moving forward. “Roll On” is a biting, sneering letter. “You’re Jesus’ age / but you’ve only been betrayed by the calendar,” he sings. “What to do next?” is the question of the song. Time is passing by, everything is falling apart. What to do? “Roll On”.

{www.team-love.com}


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