Johnny Blue Skies / Sturgill Simpson: Passage du Desir Album Evaluate

The album opens on the excessive seas, the identical longitude the place Sailor’s Information left off. The Navy enabled him to see the world and discover himself, however on “Swamp of Disappointment,” the ocean is a spot of confusion, peril, and struggling. Passage is wracked with tribulation, filled with loss of life and disconnection and desires of escape. On the yacht-country “Scooter Blues,” ostensibly the album’s most upbeat music, Sturgill fantasizes about leaving Nashville and self-exiling to some unnamed island. The buildup of particulars—rhyming “chocolate milk and Eggos” with “steppin’ on Legos,” taking over kickboxing to remain in form—means that that is no idle reverie however a path to freedom: a solution to lose one self and achieve one other. “Gonna hop on my scooter and go all the way down to the shop. When folks say are you him, I’ll say not anymore.”

If his lyrics tackle numerous strains of alienation, the music on Passage du Desir engages with all kinds of sounds and kinds and scenes. He often is the solely main Nashville artist who has Can and Amon Düül in his assortment, who hears in ’70s nation a type of avant-garde impulse. Sturgill is at his most cosmic on “Jupiter’s Faerie,” which raises a glass to an outdated good friend who died earlier than they may make amends. The story is sure to Earth, however the music imagines an afterlife within the vacuum of area: a peaceable imaginative and prescient of heaven, at the least for seven and a half minutes. On nearer “One for the Street,” he indulges a few of his shredding however with out the aggression and ostentation of SOUND & FURY. That’s becoming for what appears like a breakup music, particularly one the place he tries to stay stoic within the face of the ache he’s inflicting and feeling.

All of this heartache is filtered by means of the persona of Sturgill the Grammy-nominated nation artist, as if he can’t fairly escape that specific identification. Songs in regards to the glare of the highlight can threat sounding airtight at finest and whiny at worst, particularly when so many deserving artists would like to have their lives modified by a success album. Correctly, Sturgill performs up alienation over movie star, which makes these songs extra relatable. Primarily, he’s echoing a really completely different Johnny: Take this job and shove it. Who hasn’t questioned who they’re separate from what they do? Who hasn’t dreamed of shedding their tasks to play checkers on the seashore? You may roll your eyes when Sturgill sings, “That outdated radio nonetheless gained’t play me,” on “Who I Am,” particularly contemplating he’s achieved loads to make sure they don’t. However typically, for an artist so guarded and so prickly, Passage is concentrated outward quite than inward.

Possibly you’ve seen that I’m not referring to him right here as Johnny Blue Skies. That’s not an act of catty defiance. I’m not dismissing his have to undertake a brand new title to make this album or get comfy in his pores and skin once more, however there’s extra Sturgill on Passage du Desir than there was on his previous 4 full-lengths. So this isn’t his Camille and it possible gained’t be his Chris Gaines both. Mr. Blue Skies sounds extra like a conduit again to himself, a way of sustaining a constant identification when the world insists on twisting and contorting him into another person. “I’ve misplaced every little thing I’m, even my title,” he laments on “Who I Am.” “They don’t ask you what your title is if you rise up to heaven. And thank God, I couldn’t inform Her if I needed to who I’m.” He might go to his grave nonetheless questioning simply who the fuck he’s, however on Passage du Want, he sounds extra like himself than he has in ages.

Johnny Blue Skies / Sturgill Simpson: Passage du Desir