A Sailor's Guide to Earth

Sturgill Simpson has been running in a different direction for a while, and with A Sailor's Guide To Earth, he's finally arrived in another world.

Overall, the album is strikingly intimate.

Cue nuggets of advice from someone who’s had his own share of knocks, self-inflicted and otherwise, as Simpson and the band tackle brassy R&B, Memphis soul and swampy country, augmented by semi-orchestral strings and bound together by his extraordinary baritone.

As singer, songwriter, producer and bandleader, Simpson juggled his own destiny on A Sailor’s Guide to Earth without dropping the baby. Afforded creative freedom many felt would be stifled, Simpson’s latest musical offspring is a love letter we can all cherish. Ahmet Ertegun would be proud.

It's a telling indication of the degree of daring and sophistication at hand that artistic gestures which might have seemed contrived or ill-conceived in other contexts--like say, transforming Nirvana's "In Bloom" into a majestic country-souul ballad worthy of Charley Pride-yield some of the most startling results. [May 2016, p.63]

As a whole, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is simultaneously eclectic and of a piece: It’s big and bold and sometimes messy, but never unfocused.

Sturgill Simpson has recorded an interesting album about the lure of home. Musically, it's a bold step away from the excellent Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (there's more soul and brass in A Sailor's Guide to Earth) but the songwriting remains strong and beguiling.

A Sailor's Guide to Earth is audacious in a genre that prizes hat size over innovation, a concept album about parenting and childhood intended for consumption in one continuous sitting like a short story. [Jul 2016, p.114]

A Sailor's Guide to Earth is such a rearrangement of Simpson's sonic universe that any previous categorization now seems out of date.

It’s hardly a revolutionary album, but its melding of styles--pedal steel is draped across the songs like Spanish moss, and Estonian guitarist Laur Joamets takes solos off in deliciously unexpected directions, sometimes veering towards space--gives it a fresh, unsullied feeling. Simpson’s writing, too, is fantastic.

“Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)” starts the record with a foreboding sound that moves to stately piano and tremolo strings before exploding into soul. Nirvana’s “In Bloom” is turned into sweeping countrypolitan; “All Around You” offers killer country soul. “A Sailor’s Guide” confirms that Simpson isn’t content to stand in the same place for very long.

Sailor's Guide is classic album length--nine songs, 39 minutes--and best heard in one sitting; this is Nashville craft less as pop science than as expansive headphone storytelling.

A skilled interpreter, Simpson’s bruised baritone murmur morphs to fit the contours of each song.

There are times when A Sailor's Guide to Earth threatens to float away on a slipstream of strings and melodies that are heartfelt and hookless. Even at these moments, his ambition remains ingratiating: he might not quite arrive precisely where he intended, but as he makes it so clear throughout the album, what matters is the journey itself.

Simpson invests this bold, widescreen music with such heartfelt and real pathos and joy that it announces him as a major talent, and makes A Sailor’s Guide To Earth so rewarding.

Written for one lucky baby boy, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth also welcomes the unmarried, infertile, abandoned, and middle-aged with unconditional love. If Father’s Day is just another Sunday, let Simpson be your proxy.

With Simpson self-producing Earth, and with the Dap-Kings always ready to land on the one with a bari-sax skronk, it feels like a Nashville album that’s been dudded up and funked out.