The album ends with soulful lead single “Sanctuary,” a song about trying to reconcile tragedy and joy, with references to John Prine (“Handsome Johnny had to go, child…”), economic disparity, and the redemptive quality of hope. Indeed, Quietly Blowing It is a distillation of the rolling Hiss Golden Messenger groove, from the rollicking, Allman-esque “The Great Mystifier” to the chiming falsetto soul of “It Will If We Let It,” to the smoky, shuffling title track with its bittersweet guitar assist from Nashville legend Buddy Miller. Beginning with the wanderer’s lament of “Way Back in the Way Back,” with its rallying cry of “Up with the mountains, down with the system,” Taylor carries the listener on a musical journey that continually returns to themes of growing up, loss, obligation, and labor with piercing clarity, and his musical influences-including classic Southern soul and gospel, renegade country, and spiritual jazz-have never felt more genuine. Throughout Quietly Blowing It, Taylor brings his keen eye to our “broken American moment”-as he first sang on Hiss Golden Messenger’s critically acclaimed, GRAMMY®-nominated Terms of Surrender-in ways that feel devastatingly intimate and human. “We’ve all spent so many years traveling all over the world, but in that moment, it felt cathartic to be recording those particular songs with each other in our own small hometown.” “We all needed to be making that music together,” he recalls. In July, the group of musicians, with Taylor in the production seat, went into Overdub Lane in Durham, NC, for a week, where they recorded Quietly Blowing It as an organic unit honed to a fine edge from their years together on the road. And being in my studio, which is both isolated from and totally connected to the life of my family, felt appropriate for these songs.” Between March and June, Taylor wrote and recorded upwards of two dozen songs-in most cases playing all of the instruments himself-before winnowing the collection down and bringing them to the Hiss band. “Writing became a daily routine,” he explains, “and that was a ballast for me. Having spent so much time on the road over the past ten years, where writing consistently with any kind of flow can be tricky, it felt refreshing. Quietly Blowing It was written and arranged by Taylor in his home studio-his 8’ × 10’ sanctuary packed floor to ceiling with books, records, and old guitars-as he watched the chaotic world spin outside his window. “I got way more time than I needed, actually.” And I got the time required in order to do that.” He pauses and laughs ruefully. Maybe I had the presence of mind when I was writing Quietly Blowing It to know that this was the time to go as deep as I needed to in order to make a record like this.

“It’s not exactly a record about the state of the world-or my world-in 2020, but more a retrospective of the past five years of my life, painted in sort of impressionistic hues. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger about his new album Quietly Blowing It, out June 25, 2021, on Merge Records. “I went looking for peace,” says songwriter M.C. > SEND tickets to another fan, friend or family member > REQUEST tickets to this sold out show by joining Higher Ground’s wait-list Over the course of the last decade plus, Hiss Golden Messenger has amassed an impressive body of work consisting of seven critically acclaimed albums and a devoted fanbase.The OFFICIAL TICKET EXCHANGE for Hiss Golden Messenger – 4/14 is now open. M.C Taylor recently received his first Grammy nomination for the 2019 album Terms of Surrender, which is up for Best Americana Album. Fare thee well, John Prine, AKA Handsome Johnny, a speaker of truth if ever there was one', said Taylor. ‘Sanctuary’ is one small piece of my own personal reckoning with what it feels like to search for some kind of shelter in the storm. ‘We sell the world to buy fire, our way lighted by burning men,’ says the poet Wendell Berry. “Over the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we care for ourselves and each other. Taylor, the single is a hearty, soulful take on 'how hard it is to live truthfully in a world that is so tangled'.

Led by the reflective and erudite songwriting of M.C. Grammy nominee Hiss Golden Messenger has released a brand new single 'Sanctuary', out now via Merge Records.

Hiss golden messenger sanctuary