Hiss Golden Messenger: Heart Like a Levee

If I was talking music with someone and they recommended a band using the below blurbs from Heart Like a Levee, I’d be liable to throw out a lukewarm “sure, I’ll check ‘em out” and then go home and listen to just about anything else. You tell me a band is “a tapestry of folk, country, blues, and dub” and I’m worried I’m being suckered into listening to the Dead. I don’t like the Dead.

“a tapestry of folk, country, blues, and dub" (Pitchfork)

“a more blues- and gospel-oriented sound without leaving behind their trademark folk-inspired Americana” (AllMusic)

But that’s why there are adages about judging books by their covers. Heart Like a Levee is, in my book, peak Hiss Golden Messenger, and even though too much consumption can render Hiss’s oeuvre as gratingly Dead-like and MC Taylor’s voice Dylanesque in its nasal whine, I love Heart just the same.

MC Taylor — the titular Messenger, so to speak, as he’s the songwriter and lone constant under the billing (he’s even performed solo sets as HGM) — is a consistently literate and evocative writer from record to record, but the best ones jump out at me depending on what’s motivating Taylor and who else is involved from a list of sometime-collaborators that includes Tift Merritt, Phil and Brad Cook, Darren Jessee (drums for Ben Folds Five and The War on Drugs), one of the National’s Dessners, Jenny Lewis, William Tyler, and plenty of cameos from other people you can find on Merge Records’s seasonal samplers.

Heart features both Cooks prominently, Merritt on sublime vocal harmonies, and saxophonist Michael Lewis, who I’d never heard of previously but who excels at seasoning Taylor’s songs with anything from gentle long tones to squealing skronks. There’s a lyrical uneasiness to it, apparently gleaned from Taylor’s discomfort at how the responsibilities of being a successful career musician pull him from parenting. I dig lyrical uneasiness — I am always uneasy — and my comfort level with the tie between my professional standing and my worth as a capital-p Person is tenuous at best, so this kind of unease speaks to me.

Uneasy lyrics affect me even more when I can tap my toe to the song. “Biloxi” was the first single from the record and first song from it that I heard. YouTube reviewer Sam_b1 called it“more radio ready than his previous music,” and I know it’s not how Sam_b1 meant it, but rock on, Brother Beavis. Give me those sweet hooks! Biloxi has a chugging acoustic guitar part, some sweet dobro or slide licks, and feels relaxed and contented, a sound that belies lyrical turns like

But all around my old hometown I was known as a loner
Oh you know I wasn't lonely, I just liked being alone

“Biloxi” is good, but it’s not what I look forward to when I put the record on. Neither is “Tell Her I’m Just Dancing,” which is also good, in the same jaunty-number-with-sober-lyrics way, reminding me, a depression-haver, that “you can't choose your blues, but you might as well own them.”

The centerpiece of the record is the weird, Meters-go-Americana juke of “Like a Mirror Loves a Hammer,” the short, instrumental palate cleanser, and the simple, desperate plead that is “Cracked Windshield.”

I don’t even know what the primary rhythm instrument is on “Mirror Loves a Hammer.” A clavinet? Does it even matter? Whatever it is, it teams up with multi-tracked vocal and saxes and a bassline that hangs just behind the beat to make for a serious head-nodder.

This emotional wallop concludes side one — thankfully, they weren’t separated in some record company fuckery, Merge does better by artist vision than that — and does so in a way that the walk to change sides lets you dwell on what you’ve done. The second half doesn’t hit the same highs, but much of it imbibes me with the same feeling of calm goodwill that I get from gospel. It’s the gentle slope to the depot at the end of the roller coaster.

This cover kid is clearly suspicious of either my or the photographer’s motivations.

I couldn’t remember where I bought this, and a quick search of my Gmail reminds me that I ordered it directly from Merge, probably because I liked its predecessor and the first two singles — and reminds me that I’ve saved too much shit in my mailbox.

I saw Hiss tour this record at The Broadberry in Richmond in winter of 2017. My faded memories of the show are that they played most of the record and did it well and that I stood in front of Agents of Good Roots’ bassist Stewart Myers and felt guilty for blocking his view.

More soon.