Jump For Joy: Orange & Black Swirl Vinyl LP

Label: Merge
Release Date: 25th August

Mister Hiss can't half write a song, friend, every record I find myself absolutely obsessed with his songs, how does he make them so listenable? I ain't Rick Beato of youtube.com, I can't analyse his music but what I know is that indie fried country folk has such an unctuous lilt, proper moreish and hearty music, like crumble and ice cream with homespun tales. LOVE 'Jump For Joy'.

The songs that make up Jump for Joy—the sharpest and most autobiographical that M.C. 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.

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.