M.C. Taylor, the artist behind Hiss Golden Messenger, composed I’m People in New Mexico, California, and his home base of Durham, North Carolina. The tracks were recorded at Woodstock’s Dreamland Recording Studios with a team of like-minded musicians, including Josh Kaufman (who, along with Taylor, played stringed instruments and co-produced the album), JT Bates (drums and percussion), and Cameron Ralston (bass). At its core, the record shines a particular light on people attempting to exist during a difficult time. Like all of Hiss Golden Messenger’s output, there was never any doubt that the final product would be sophisticated and heartfelt.
Over the span of 11 LPs, Taylor has become a master at holding incongruities aloft while seeking harmony. With each successive release, he delivers much of what listeners have come to expect. His songwriting style is often personal and intimate; however, that doesn’t stop him from occasionally stretching their sound to take a chance at something grand.
As an Appalachian roots band, Hiss Golden Messenger started as mostly apolitical, but social commentary has come to the forefront of their most recent releases. I saw Hiss Golden Messenger perform at an arts center shortly after Trump’s first inauguration, and, despite the band’s best efforts, the mood was despondent. Fast forward a few years, and they were opening for Jason Isbell at an amphitheater, which was an entirely different experience. Taylor has the chops to walk a fine line between tolerance and outrage.
There is a down-home sentimentality to the group that suggests humble beginnings and the unlikely prospect of mass appeal. Taylor has eased into his role as a musician’s musician, an artist big enough for guest contributions from Bruce Hornsby, Sam Beam, Sara Watkins, Eric D. Johnson, and Griff and Taylor Goldsmith (among others), yet never at risk of becoming a household name.
I’m People is comprised of many complex, messy, and wonderful things. According to Taylor, the songwriting process was painstaking. The songs were about running toward and away from things. Listeners find him “rummaging through scrap heaps of the heart, breaking and making and breaking again”. Throughout the record, he doesn’t shy away from this vulnerability.
His Golden Messenger’s manner of depicting two seemingly disparate things at once is nothing new. Go back to “Mahogany Dread” (still, for my money, his most stirring statement) and hear an artist working through regret while celebrating life, or even further back to “O Little Light”, which speaks about the surrounding beauty in the face of oppression.
The tracks are indebted to places (Mexico City, Seneca, the Bye & Bye, and other stages and bars) and the dynamic people that inhabit them. Fittingly, the album fades-in—effectively dropping listeners in on the action—with the single “In the Middle of It”, an up-tempo number that feels like traveling.
Community serves as a way to combat what ails us. There is something unifying about being in this thing together. Lyrics from “Heavy World” (“Storms in the East, fires in the West / I can’t tell who’s in and who’s out / Some tried to storm the castle with a bucket on their head / And a frying pan”) capture how disorienting everything is. We are all just trying to make sense of the world, or, more poetically: “Truth, lies, magic, faith / I’ve been trying to find the missing link in the chain.”
Taylor wanted the songwriting to sound effortless. Mostly, he achieved that goal at the risk of sounding too polished in places. The downtempo numbers, enriched by various instrumentation (bongos, horns, fiddle), create a mood that’s subdued. In “Gabriel”, the brushed percussion, keys, and lilting vocals approach the most cloying ends of the Americana spectrum. The same can be said of “Seneca”, which eases along leisurely in line with its steel guitar. “Depends on the River,” the moving spiritual that closes the album, proves the exception.
The compositions sound most vibrant when they’re celebratory, as on their second single, “Shaky Eyes”. In addition, “Spirit Love” jams. The track that locks into a groove that could extend beyond the wailing guitar solo that culminates the number. Another standout, “Last Orders,” is steeped in a freewheeling rock-and-gospel tradition that traces its roots back through the Black Crowes and the Rolling Stones to those seminal artists.
Hiss Golden Messenger remain caught between two worlds. They seek to confront the complexities and contradictions that shape our lives. However, their principal songwriter would feel right at home kicking off his boots and making music in a circle of friends. Throughout the ebbs and flows of I’m People, that’s the dynamic at play. When the music ends, there is some solace in knowing somebody else is out there trying to make sense of it all.