Photo by Graham Tolbert. Design by Joe Frontel.
The cover of the Feb. 22, 2024 issue of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.
“There's something very nostalgic and comforting about things like Christmas lights for me, but I also really appreciate the moving on of January and the feeling of a fresh start if you need it,” Taylor, 48, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay early this year.
On Monday, that moving on brings Taylor’s band to the Bay area where it opened for Mumford & Sons in 2017, and in 2015 played Gasparilla Music Festival (GMF). The show is one of a trio of Florida dates ahead of Hiss Golden Messenger’s stint on the Cayamo Cruise.
“I'm fascinated with Florida,” he said, adding that he had “a fucking great time” at GMF. “I thought, 'Tampa seems cool. I'm into this place.'”
Hiss’ latest album, Jump For Joy, was released last summer as a follow up to 2021’s Quietly Blowing It, which was preceded in 2019 by Terms of Surrender, a nominee for Best Americana Album at the 2021 Grammys. There’s also a lot to be into when it comes to the substance and sound of Hiss’ new, 14-track outing.
The record’s been described as Taylor’s most boisterous or ebullient LP, but in many ways the 38-minutes of it are thematically consistent with the music Hiss has recorded since its self-released 2008 debut Country Hai East Cotton. The tunes are still bonafide gospel music for non-believers, and they’re once again marked by Taylor’s deep commitment to rhythm, tempo, and the things that both a listener and musician can find in a groove.
“That's always been almost the most important musical quality of what I do as Hiss, I think. Everything has to feel like it's in some kind of pocket,” Taylor—who has a master’s degree in folklore—explained.
Helping him find that pocket are musicians that’ve been part of the Hiss equation for years: Chris Boerner on guitar, Sam Fribush on organ and piano, plus bassist Alex Bingham. Nick Falk, who is on Jump For Joy, plays drums. On the album, the ensemble also plays MPC, steel pan, woodwinds and array of synths while getting help on horns, fiddle, plus backup vocals from indie-favorites like I’m With Her’s Aoife O'Donovan and Eric Johnson of Fruit Bats and The Shins.
The band was already playing a lot of the songs before recording them, and Taylor said it’s been enlightening to perform them in the sort of heightened or amplified, transcendental and emotional state of a live show. Some have even taken on a life of their own.
“Jesus Is Bored,” for instance, is kind of like the thesis of the record, which Taylor has previously described as a kind of hopeful, long postcard between him and a younger, maybe teenage, version of himself. “Please give me something to lift me up out of this darkness, something to light my way. I want to be good enough,” he sings on the mid-tempo rocker.
“It's not the loudest song, it's not the fastest song,” Taylor said, but it unfolded beautifully into an extended highlight of the set. “That's not something I was anticipating at all, but it went there, and I was like, 'This is how we play this song for people.'”
That sort of listening is a hallmark of Taylor’s life right now.
Musically these days, he’s working on projects that are only Hiss adjacent. He came up in San Francisco’s punk scene, and being around different musicians means his life has been kind of cacophonous in a way. But at home Taylor works on getting small, quiet, and surrounded by the poems and music that inspires him. All of that is helping Taylor navigate back to not knowing.“I’m trying to find my way back to a feeling of mystery and magic.”
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“I'm trying to find my way back to a feeling of mystery and magic,” he explained.
Encountering fresh ideas and feelings, then experimenting with them, is part of that process. It’s safe to say, however, that whatever Taylor produces in that practice will still accomplish what’s felt like the mission of Hiss Golden Messenger from its inception—to convey the fullness of being a human in a song.
That sentiment manifests itself all over Jump For Joy—which was produced with Scott Hirsch at Texas’ fabled Sonic Ranch studio, just steps from the Mexican border—especially on the title track. On it, Taylor goes face-to-face with an apocalypse, with just $20 in his pocket.
“The seas are rising. Still, I gotta make it right,” he sings. “Jump for joy. See where it gets you.”
The feel of the song, like much of the album, is certainly jubilant, but the cut is neither happy nor sad. In Taylor’s experience, much of the world we walk through is like that. Chasing that ambiguity—and making it work in a song be it through tunings or undefined chords—is part of the Hiss songwriting process.
“I really think my best songs are songs that feel happy and sad at the same time,” he explained.
When it comes to trying to make sense of the world at large, that’s about as fresh of a start as you can get.
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