![]() “A song is just a feeling and when you make it pay the rent, next thing that you know, you're saying something you'd never say,” he sings on “Cracked Windshield. Forgetting, momentarily, that for me, each exists only with the other.” There are certainly wrenching moments of conflict and realization in his songs. The composition of Heart Like a Levee (the title alone evocative of so much), Taylor says, began in a snow-bound hotel room in Washington, DC, when he was “feeling – more acutely than I had ever felt before – wrenched apart by my responsibilities to my family and to my music. ![]() Moments like this infuse Taylor’s songs – moments that are highly evocative of the sometimes nameless grief and joy of life. The sax solo on the 80s psych-pop “Ace of Cups Hung Low Band” feels pulled from David Bowie’s swansong. On “Mahagony Dread” for example, a song that evokes both the beauty and grief of aging, the perfectly placed organ solo that closes the song invokes just as much melancholy and grace as the lyrics do. Listen to any three songs on his highly-praised 2014 album The Lateness of Dancers or his newly minted Heart Like a Levee (released just last Friday on Merge records) and the punk influence might be hard to find – but his expansive music knowledge is not. ![]() He is also a college lecturer on American folklore and has collaborated with Quincy Jones on a music education curriculum. Taylor cut his teeth in California with the hardcore punk band Ex-Ignota and found success with the indie pop outfit The Court & Spark before relocating to the Durham area in 2007. ![]() A sound that mines many influences but whose thickest vein is certainly Dylan’s. Taylor, Hiss Golden Messenger’s sole permanent member, sings with the nasally twang redolent of Dylan’s late 60s sound, while his songs are built on that blend of American folk, country rock, Muscle Shoals blues and gospel that has become the soul of today’s Americana sound. With the recent announcement that Bob Dylan is this year’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, you can be forgiven if thinking Hiss Golden Messenger’s appearance at the Mothlight this Friday feels a bit like a victory lap. ![]()
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