Sturgill Simpson - Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (2014)

Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Lindi Ortega, Jamey Johnson) produced both Sturgill Simpson albums. Metamodern Sounds In Country Music was recorded live-to-tape at Cobb’s LCS studio in Nashville over four days in late 2013. Rather than being joined by legendary Nashville session players such as Hargus ‘Pig’ Robbins and Robby Turner, as he was on his debut, this time around Simpson recorded the album with his own band (bassist Kevin Black, guitarist Laur Joamets and drummer Miles Miller) who were fresh back from a two month US tour - as Simpson puts it ‘4 guys, 4 days and 4 reels of tape’. The title of the album bows to Ray Charles, while the lyrics to lead track ‘Turtles All the Way Down’ nods to psychedelic drug chronicler Rick Strassman and ‘The Promise’ finds Simpson covering UK synth-pop also-rans When in Rome. Simpson’s portrait on the album cover was designed by friend and painter Jason Seiler, who is perhaps best known for illustrating Pope Francis XVI for TIME Magazine’s 2013 ‘Person of the Year’ issue in addition to contributing art to publications such as The New York Times, Rolling Stone and The Wall Street Journal. Of the album, Simpson comments ‘Myriad worldly offerings—religion, drugs, and more—all claim to be the omnipotent universal truth but in my experience, love is the only certainty. That’s what this record is about.’