Simon Joyner - Grass, Branch & Bone (2015)

"Grass, Branch & Bone" is Joyner's thirteenth proper album and a sonic departure from 2012's "Ghosts". While his last record was a double album of dark, dissonant songs confronting death and loss in the vein of Neil Young's "Tonight's the Night", this new album is sparse by comparison, running with the likes of other singer-songwriter outcast aftermath albums like Dylan's "John Wesley Harding", Gene Clark's "White Light", David Blue's "Stories", Jerry Jeff Walker's "Five Years Gone", Townes Van Zandt's "Our Mother the Mountain" and Cohen's "Recent Songs". It's a natural progression, after a funeral we always take stock and reflect on our own life. "Grass, Branch & Bone" is a song cycle of short stories about time and memory, full of people you've known and people you've been.