★★★★★
Dwight Yoakam on LSD? Actually, that rippling tenor belongs to former Sunday Valley frontman Sturgill Simpson, pondering a mental gateway, "Where reptile aliens made of light cut you open and pull out all your pain" on lysergic opener "Turtles All the Way Down." For his second solo LP, the rising rural talent turns his third eye to existential contemplation grounded enough on "Living the Dream" to yield a line like, "I don't need to change my strings 'cause the dirt don't hurt the way I sing...
- www.austinchronicle.com
2014-06-19
★★★★★
Anyone for metaphysical prog country? Nashville songwriter heads for the stars... He might have the hard-hit voice and the classic outlaw sound, but Sturgill Simpson is anything but predictable. The swift arrival of this year's second release, following on from debut High Top Mountain, is evidence of both a febrile mind and keen work ethic. As Simpson told Uncut prior to its arrival: "Making conceptual pieces is a goal for me...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2014-06-13
★★★★★
Today's country music is already plenty meta - how many songs about playing country radio can country radio play? - but with his new LP, Kentucky's Sturgill Simpson is taking it metamodern. So, uh, what does that mean, exactly? Picture what Waylon would have sounded like if he had taken Willie's drugs: This is a record that is equal parts haunted, tender and trippy...
- www.rollingstone.com
2014-05-31
★★★★★
With the exception of a few artists, modern country has taken a hard left turn for the worse over the past two decades. Ask some people, and they might even say country's become a shell of its former self. Sturgill Simpson is not one of those people--mostly because he doesn't seem to care what is happening within the confines of the country music world. Instead the Kentucky-born singer looks to more far-out places on his second full-length, Metamodern Sounds In Country Music...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2014-05-22
★★★★★
Apart from its clever Ray Charles-reference title, Metamodern Sounds In Country Music, the second album from Texas singer Sturgill Simpson, is a traditionalist statement through and through. As a singer, Simpson is a walking dictionary of classic male country vocalists. He is an expressive vocalist that can conjure the aching pain of George Jones, the deep melodrama of Charlie Rich, or the subversive grit of Merle Haggard on the turn of a phrase...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2014-05-20
★★★★★
Sturgill Simpson saw Jesus juggle flames and met the devil in Seattle, or so he sings on "Turtles All the Way Down", the opening track on his second solo album. Just when you think he's slinging the same Biblical imagery Johnny Cash foretold on "The Man Comes Around", Simpson adds that he "Met Buddha yet another time/ And he showed me a glowing light within...
- pitchfork.com
2014-05-16
★★★★★
Sturgill Simpson is helping to rewrite the definition of authenticity in country music. Today, if you have a boozy baritone and kind of sound like Waylon, you're expected to sing about the good old days and being an outlaw, which, in its own way, is becoming about as much of a ploy and gimmick as Luke Bryan singing about drinking on some beach. (See Eric Church)...
- www.popmatters.com
2014-05-13
★★★★★
Among the most exciting records of 2014, Sturgill Simpson's sophomore LP plays like an album-length reward for fans of country music with long memories and open minds. Full of clever references to classic country stars, songs and seminal albums (the title is a play on Ray Charles' , one of the most important country records of the 1960s), Sturgill's music is at once traditional and visionary. He is playful, but reverent...
- exclaim.ca
2014-07-16
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