HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER - JUMP FOR JOY (LP)

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER - JUMP FOR JOY (LP)LTD PEAK VINYL EDITION via MERGE, ORANGE & BLACK SWIRL VINYL LP and OUR COPIES ARRIVED DIRECT FROM THE LABEL WITH AN EXCLUSIVE ART PRINT THAT YOU WON'T FIND IN TOO MANY SHOPS. "Its spring of 2023 in the North Carolina Piedmont, and songwriter and singer M. C. Taylorleader of the band Hiss Golden Messengeris feeling alive. Joyful. Eternal,he might say. For the Grammy nominated musician, whose albums have traced aninternal path through adulthood,

LTD PEAK VINYL EDITION via MERGE, ORANGE & BLACK SWIRL VINYL LP and OUR COPIES ARRIVED DIRECT FROM THE LABEL WITH AN EXCLUSIVE ART PRINT THAT YOU WON'T FIND IN TOO MANY SHOPS.

"It’s spring of 2023 in the North Carolina Piedmont, and songwriter and singer M.C.
Taylor—leader of the band Hiss Golden Messenger—is feeling alive. Joyful. Eternal,
he might say. For the Grammy-nominated musician, whose albums have traced an
internal path through adulthood, fatherhood, spirituality, and depression for well over
a decade, this is something new. “The tunes on Jump for Joy were composed in free
moments throughout 2022, a year during which Hiss was on the road more or less
constantly,” explains Taylor. “And perhaps because the post-pandemic energy out in
the world felt so chaotic and uncertain, I found myself thinking a lot about the role
that music has played in my life and how exactly I ended up in the rarefied position
of leading a band and crew all over the globe through dingy graffiti-scrawled green
rooms, venerated music halls, dust-blown roadside motels. Sometimes playing in
front of 5,000; sometimes 200. Sleeping sitting up. Laughing until my stomach hurts.
Not being able to fall asleep at 3 a.m. in some anonymous bed because my mind is
spinning with anxiety or depression or adrenaline, or because my ears are still ringing.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul, then robbing Paul to pay Peter back. Over and over again.
It’s an outlaw life but one, I’m coming to realize, that makes me happy.”

The songs that make up Jump for Joy—the sharpest and most autobiographical that
Taylor has written under the Hiss name—read as a sort of epistolary, postcards
between the present-day songwriter and his alias Michael Crow, a teenaged
dreamer very much like Taylor himself, who trips his way through the 14 tunes
that make up the record. In this way, Jump for Joy is a meditation on a life lived with
art, and the ways that our hopes and dreams and decisions bump up against—
and, with a little bit of luck, occasionally merge with—real life.
“Creating this character became the way that I could explore these vulnerable,
tender moments that were so decisive in my life, even if I didn’t know it at the
time,” explains Taylor.

Produced by Taylor and engineered by longtime Hiss compatriot Scott Hirsch over
two weeks in the late fall of 2022 at the fabled Sonic Ranch studio in Tornillo, TX,
just a short walk from the Mexican border, Jump for Joy dances with joyful, spontaneous energy that feels like a fresh chapter in the Hiss Golden Messenger oeuvre. Taylor is accompanied throughout the album by his crack live band: guitarist Chris Boerner, bassist Alex Bingham, keyboardist Sam Fribush, and drummer Nick Falk, a collection of musicians that have helped make Hiss Golden Messenger’s live
performances legendary affairs."