Hiss Golden Messenger

Hiss Golden Messenger – Mystic What: Live in Kansas City and St. Louis (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:28:18 minutes | 1007 MB | Genre: Folk Rock, Alt. Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hiss Golden Messenger

Mystic What was recorded live at recordBar in Kansas City, MO, and Off Broadway in St. Louis, MO, in March of 2022.

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Hiss Golden Messenger – Jump for Joy (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:56 minutes | 859 MB | Genre: Folk, Alt. Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Merge Records

It’s spring of 2023 in the North Carolina Piedmont, and songwriter and singer M.C. Taylor leader of the band Hiss Golden Messenger is feeling alive. Joyful. Eternal, he might say. For the Grammy-nominated musician, whose albums have traced an internal path through adulthood, fatherhood, spirituality, and depression for well over a decade, this is something new. “The tunes on Jump for Joy were composed in free moments throughout 2022, a year during which Hiss was on the road more or less constantly,” explains Taylor. “And perhaps because the post-pandemic energy out in the world felt so chaotic and uncertain, I found myself thinking a lot about the role that music has played in my life and how exactly I ended up in the rarefied position of leading a band and crew all over the globe through dingy graffiti-scrawled green rooms, venerated music halls, dust-blown roadside motels. Sometimes playing in front of 5,000; sometimes 200. Sleeping sitting up. Laughing until my stomach hurts. Not being able to fall asleep at 3 a.m. in some anonymous bed because my mind is spinning with anxiety or depression or adrenaline, or because my ears are still ringing. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, then robbing Paul to pay Peter back. Over and over again. It’s an outlaw life but one, I’m coming to realize, that makes me happy.”
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Hiss Golden Messenger – The Sounding Joy: Hiss Golden Messenger Meets Revelators on South Robinson Street (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 35:07 minutes | 294 MB | Genre: Electronic, Dub
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Merge Records

Hiss Golden Messenger today released The Sounding Joy: Hiss Golden Messenger Meets Revelators on South Robinson Street through Merge Records. The six-track record comes as a dub remix companion to HGM’s recently released O Come All Ye Faithful holiday album.

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Hiss Golden Messenger – Quietly Blowing It (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:19 minutes | 708 MB | Genre: Folk Rock, Alt. Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Merge Records

Hiss Golden Messenger’s Quietly Blowing It was written and arranged by M.C. Taylor in his home studio—his 8’ × 10’ sanctuary packed floor to ceiling with books, records, and old guitars—as he watched the chaotic world spin outside his window. Between March and June 2020, Taylor wrote and recorded upwards of two dozen songs—in most cases playing all of the instruments himself—before winnowing the collection down and bringing them to the Hiss band. In July, the group of musicians, with Taylor in the production seat, went into Overdub Lane in Durham, NC, for a week, where they recorded Quietly Blowing It as an organic unit honed to a fine edge from their years together on the road.

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Hiss Golden Messenger – O Come All Ye Faithful (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 38:06 minutes | 685 MB | Genre: Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Merge Records

Conceptualized and written during the chaotic fall months of 2020, Hiss Golden Messenger’s O Come All Ye Faithful recorded shortly after the widely hailed Quietly Blowing It is a meditation on grace, loss, hope, and community. Explains songwriter M.C. Taylor, “Big, brash holiday music the type that we hear in big box stores in the middle of December has never resonated with me, and this past year it felt absolutely dissonant. I wanted to make a seasonal record that felt more in step with the way that I, and so many others, experience this time of year: quiet, contemplative, searching, and bittersweet.

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