A clutch of North Carolina albums have been on my mind of late. Hiss Golden Messenger’s Haw is the third corner of a triangle that started with the solitary winter blues of 2010’s Bad Debt and more full-flowered folk-rock of Poor Moon in 2011. The three albums cover a similar surface area, a haunted little patch of earth that I’m often wary to get too close to. It’s funny: a friend of mine recently called Hiss Golden Messenger “accessible,” though it’s more like the old trope of something pleasant-sounding telling you terrible things. Haw starts out with the busted soul of “Red Rose Nantahala,” before detouring to the circuital ground plan of “Hat Of Rain,” a revisionist soundtrack of sorts to an imagined Druid ceremony. This is some of HGM tunesmith Mike Taylor’s deepest, darkest stuff. Be warned.
It may be a stretch to call Golden Gunn a “North Carolina record,” though it too seems to find a genesis in the Piedmont, when Three Lobed label head Cory Rayborn suggested a collaboration between Mike Taylor and the Brooklyn guitarist Steve Gunn. “We had a lot of the same influences and were into the same shit,” Taylor told AD back in February. “Basically, JJ Cale.”
Though Cale surely looms large, the real patron saint of Golden Gunn is a hard-up trucker named Dickie, a character cooked up on a long car ride by Taylor, Gunn, and liner notes scribe, Brendan Greaves (of NC label Paradise of Bachelors, which released Haw and will put out Gunn’s forthcoming Time Off in June).
Taylor and Gunn traded the tapes back and forth from North Carolina to Brooklyn (where HGM partner Scott Hirsch also assisted heavily), and the album sways from Taylor’s cosmic country soul to Gunn’s Takoma School guitar style. Then there’s the places where they deftly meet in the middle: the instrumental “Lal’s Song,” which wouldn’t have been out of place on a Cowboy record, or “From A Lincoln Continental,” a soul-jazz Curtis Mayfield-ian slice of slow funk, or the chilled-out desert boogie woogie of “The Sun Comes Up A Purple Diamond.”
Golden Gunn came out quietly in a limited edition of 995 LPs on Record Store Day, but don’t sleep on this one. words/ d inman
[…] Aquarium Drunkard » Hiss Golden Messenger :: Haw // Golden … […]
1 | Aquarium Drunkard » Hiss Golden Messenger :: Haw // Golden … | Lavanaut May 14th, 2013 at 7:37 amHitting the spot, thanks for the heads-up!
2 | Dean May 14th, 2013 at 9:58 amSo happy to see this small release highlighted here. It’s a damn nice record.
3 | Needles May 14th, 2013 at 8:44 pm[…] We’re grateful to Bob Moses, who filed this brilliant profile of Hiss Golden Messenger for No Depression and the Huffington Post, as well as to Davis Inman, who covered Haw and Golden Gunn for Aquarium Drunkard. […]
4 | Memorial Day in Paradise: Artist News and Musings. | Paradise of Bachelors May 27th, 2013 at 11:02 am[…] member of the psychedelic roots outfit Megafaun, the bar-rocking Shouting Matches, a contributor to Hiss Golden Messenger’s country soul boogie, and the music director of the forthcoming album by gospel stalwarts Blind Boys […]
5 | Aquarium Drunkard » Phil Cook :: The Jensens / This Side Up (EP) July 18th, 2013 at 7:01 amNice one! The cover by the way is a perfect J J Cale homage, see his own ‘Really’!
6 | Koen Olie July 31st, 2013 at 6:00 am[…] Its songs found new lives on subsequent Hiss Golden Messenger LPs, 2012’s Poor Moon and 2013’s Haw, but the album remained the skeleton key in Taylor’s discography, marking the point at which the […]
7 | Aquarium Drunkard » Hiss Golden Messenger :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview January 21st, 2014 at 11:53 am[…] statement yet. The record finds Taylor joined by many of the musicians who made 2013’s Haw feel like a dramatic step forward: guitarist William Tyler, bassist/engineer Scott Hirsch, Phil and Brad Cook of Megafaun. Alexandra […]
8 | Aquarium Drunkard » Hiss Golden Messenger :: Lateness of Dancers September 9th, 2014 at 6:23 am