ALBUM REVIEW: Hiss Golden Messenger Celebrates Creativity and Community on ‘Jump for Joy’

Jump for Joy is a work about the work.

For the last two decades or so, Hiss Golden Messenger (comprised of MC Taylor and his bandmates) has followed a sonic calling to craft earnest, meaningful songs rooted in authentic experiences. Whether questioning the meaning of life, pondering the finality of dying, or chronicling the heart’s desire to be known, Taylor has always done so with beauty, integrity, and empathy. It’s why Hiss Golden Messenger’s songs have always been welcome company for the journey.

Hiss Golden Messenger’s MC Taylor (photo by Graham Tolbert)

On Jump for Joy, however, HGM has found inspiration and/or interest in the work itself. These are songs about songwriting and the journey taken by Taylor (who has created a fictional character named Michael Crow to “fill in” for him on these 14 songs) to follow a career in the arts. Jump for Joy is the resultant listening experience, a musical camera panned back that lends greater appreciation of and admiration for Hiss Golden Messenger’s approach.

“20 Years and a Nickel” opens the record with a lighter pop melody that recalls “Happy Birthday, Baby” from 2019’s Terms of Surrender (ND review). The title is Taylor’s way of referring to 25 years in the industry, and he begins the entire album with the hard-earned revelation, “There’s no such thing as a simple song.” From there he admits, “I’m waiting trying to write my masterpiece / It’s coming out a riddle / I got twenty years and a nickel.”

The glorious groove of “Shinbone” is the album’s pinnacle, an ’80s-leaning synth-driven number with a slight War on Drugs feel. It’s here that Taylor describes the fork in the road he felt as a teenager. “Taking chances, you go where you’re called / Some people hear it / Taking chances, if you lose it all / Can you love what’s left?” In the New Testament, Jesus is often quoted as saying “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” and given Taylor’s well-established spiritual bent, this feels like his documented response.

Throughout the rest of Jump for Joy, the listener is given plenty of engaging details, enjoyable anecdotes, and heartening reflections. The creative community formed in his early days has provided payment enough, as he sings on “Jesus is Bored”: “And when we wanna get gas / we gotta pool our money / God, I love it!” “My Old Friends” sits on the other side of the continuum, with Taylor reflecting on a long road life and the company kept along the way: “And the numbers grow fewer / But the stories feel truer / Because we’re the ones that wrote ’em.”

If there’s a central thesis at work on Jump for Joy, it’s found on “The Wondering.” Taylor sings, “Ever since I was just a little thing / I’ve had that certain kind of hunger / Nothing satisfies me / Save that wide-open wonder.” It’s that internal drive, that insatiable curiosity, that has fueled Taylor’s ongoing inquiries into the way he and the rest of us are wired, why life works the way it does (or doesn’t), and how love is central to all things. The songs have always been there since Hiss Golden Messenger’s earliest work, but now we understand the drive behind it all.

Hiss Golden Messenger’s Jump for Joy is out Aug. 25 on Merge Records.