The Singles Jukebox

REAL COUNTRY!!11!!!111!!

[Video][Website]
[4.38]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: High-octane psychedelic country/stoned swamp-rock that might as well make me pick up slide guitar again. And holy crap, that organ is enormous; it fuses perfectly with Sturgill’s throaty croon. 
[7]

Josh Langhoff: Sturgill Simpson makes music as an ego-driven attempt to be true to himself — who doesn’t? — but his music is all about abdicating his self. He’s atmospheric like ambient Brian Eno. And I’m not just saying that because he doesn’t write hooks! Call it “Music For SUVs.” Every sonic element, from slide guitar to organ, from strangled consonants to alpha snare thwack, is calibrated to meet the emotional needs of the meta-modern SUV driver. This music makes me feel more adult, because no right-thinking child would ever listen to it, but also like I’m rebelling against… something. Against suburbs, adulthood, the very SUV I’m driving, yes — but also against the shitty music my neighbors blare from their SUVs. (Not that we talk about music. Mostly we talk about lawn care.) “Brace For Impact” shares sonic elements with Bonnie Raitt, who preceded Simpson at AAA radio, and the Brothers Osborne, who parlayed their own song-ending guitar jam into an actual country hit, but both of them demand so much attention. Sturgill Simpson understands: sometimes I just need a blank moment to feel flattered for my taste and fret about why, out of all my neighbors, my lawn color most closely resembles the Fury Road.
[3]

Micha Cavaseno: My man’s been alive for 40 or so years, and he didn’t know that “dying to live and living to die” is an abysmal lyric to quip out. Such a shame, and no doubt failing to improve when you can mistake soulful bluesy wallowing as the kind of thing that gives value to you off the bat. So much effort to be put into coming across as something real, when it doesn’t matter if you’re nothing good.
[2]

Cassy Gress: The sound of these verses is thundering with alien footsteps, but in the chorus (lyrics aside) it turns back into a more familiar blues thump. The second half of the song, which is almost a protracted breakdown, waffles back and forth between the two.  I wish his voice had a little bit more rawness and a little less throatiness; it’d elevate the whole song.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Lots of friends who don’t otherwise give a damn about contemporary country love this dude, and while this doesn’t mean he deserves the pillory I do wonder what these people are responding to. Is it the blues-drenched outro set to organ, shuffling drums, and pedal-manipulated guitar? The decent voice? It can’t be that “Brace For Impact” sounds like a Kings of Leon track.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: The bassline prowled with enough menace to make me think an impact was coming. Alas, Sturgill growls manfully, the song staggers in an ungainly way and I don’t know what the point of that extended outro is other than making it seem even longer than it is.
[4]

Brad Shoup: There’s one bit in this galumphing rainstorm that makes an impact, and that’s the way Simpson sings “scream like a baby”. Everything else is expansively grim disco-rock, not clever enough to energize or scare.
[3]

Iain Mew: I’m still bracing.
[5]