![]() His assemblage of musicians creates the environment for his endeavor to work. There’s plenty lose in this album, and – as the title acknowledges, plenty of ways we’re quietly blowing it, but Taylor persists. He balances these feelings with doses of reality and cuts like “Mighty Dollar”, which is about precisely what you think it’s about. “We’ll be fine in the morning,” he tells us on opener “Way Back in the Way Back” with a voice that suggests his point might not be accurate, but it’s worth believing in anyway. “Hope hope is contagious,” Taylor sings on “If It Comes in the Morning”, and that line serves as a guiding principle. Quietly Blowing It by Hiss Golden Messenger Quietly Blowing It by Hiss Golden Messenger As Taylor looks for sanctuary (“That’s all I can offer you,” he sings on the track named “Sanctuary”), he isn’t fixing or fighting the world so much as he’s creating asylum. Quietly Blowing It might or might not function as “protest” or “political”, but its distance from those phrases helps it becomes more of a balm. Taylor, first as a songwriter and then with an enlarged and all-star version of Hiss Golden Messenger, finds ways to settle into this world. That world came from personal hurt, while this one comes from external crises. Taylor’s struck this balance before 2019’s Terms of Surrender, a much darker album, offered glimpses of hope in a broken world. Wisely, he navigated his own Strait of Messina for an album that offers its comforts without dismissing our need for them. ![]() Alternately, he could avoid the climate around him and spray out a bunch of sunshine. Taylor could trap himself with highly specific protest songs, venting frustration with a limited topicality. Processing the state of the world at that time posed at least two pitfalls (aside from demonstrating how to lose friends and alienate people). Many of us can relate to his quest, especially considering it took place primarily between March and June 2020, a stretch whose events require no reminders. ![]() Taylor, the artist behind Hiss Golden Messenger, began writing the songs for Quietly Blowing It, he was, in his own words, “looking for peace”. ![]()
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