FILTER ALBUMS
Hang on to yourself
Sturgill Simpson reinvents himself. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, wonders John Mulvey.
Johnny Blue Skies
★★★★
Passage Du Désir
HIGH TOP MOUNTAIN. CD/DL/LP
THE LAST time MOJO checked in with Sturgill Simpson, in 2021, he was already a man with rock’n’roll suicide on his mind. “I think about David Bowie,” he told Bill DeMain. “That’s a guy who killed Ziggy Stardust and a year-and-a-half later was an R&B singer with a new haircut. That’s the stuff that resonates with me… Once I’m done with something, I drop it and move on.”
In other interviews to ostensibly support his seventh solo album, The Ballad Of Dood
And Juanita, Simpson was more explicit about what needed to happen next. If his first four records had subverted country music with a little psychedelia, a heap of Stax soul, even ZZ Top-style electroboogie, Simpson’s last three leaned hard into bluegrass authenticity. Change was inevitable again, and imminent:Dood And