Jump For Joy
MERGE
8/10
HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER’s music reflects faith in an open-armed notion of divinity. This is seen most clearly in a similarly open idea of rock’n’roll rooted in the American South’s soil and spirit, and deepened during Hiss lynchpin MC Taylor’s wonderstruck wanderings across America. But when all that was shut down by the pandemic, their ninth full album, 2021’s , instead absorbed Taylor’s bewilderment, and his country’s chaos. “People often look at Hiss songs like beacons of hope,” he considers,] years of uncertainty tested my capacity for it. Mentally I went about as low as I could go, and on I can hear how low I was. In its tempo and type of self-reflection, it feels like the last record I can make like that.”
