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I didn’t know what to expect when I opened the music app on my phone and turned on Sturgill Simpson‘s new album, Passage Du Desir.
The truth is, nobody knows what to expect when they listen to a new Sturgill Simpson album. It’s a large part of what makes the 46-year-old country/blues/bluegrass/rock/alternative/indie (et cetera, et cetera…) artist such an extraordinary talent.
From his groundbreaking experimental country album, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music to his bluegrass concept album, The Ballad of Dude and Juanita, Simpson constantly pushes boundaries not often explored in the music world. Even less so in the world of country music, where sounds and themes often become excruciatingly cliche.
But not with Simpson. And, unsurprisingly, not with Passage Du Desir.
“Let’s put it this way. Every place you go, especially the old places, perception is what you make of it, but there are, also, shall we say, portals of perception. I’m not talking about drugs or any intrinsic, entheogenic bulls—,” Simpson told GQ of the new album, which was released Friday. “… I’m nowhere near what they would call enlightenment or reaching the boundaries, so we’re stuck here for a while in the physical realm, and we’re here to feel, whether that be pleasure, pain, suffering, what have you, but we’re here. Whether you like it or not. So pain is a tool. Neurodivergence is a tool. And I’ve learned how to embrace these things as creative tools and not feel bad about them.”
So, what exactly does that all mean? That’s for the listener to decide.
Sturgill Simpson Once Again Shows That He Contains Multitudes On Passage Du Desir
Passage Du Desire (which translates from French to Passage of Desir) lists two artists as its performers — Sturgill Simpson and Johnny Blue Skies.
Blue Skies is, physically, Simpson himself. But beyond that, he represents a part of Simpson that is presented to the world through his music.
Perhaps ironically, Passage Du Desir doesn’t present listeners with many blue skies. That could probably be inferred from the title of the lead track, “Swamp of Sadness.”
Tracks like “Jupiter’s Faerie”, a story about a long-lost friend whom Simpson learned committed suicide only when he tried to reconnect years later, take listeners’ insides and pull them out much in the way Simpson must have felt when he learned of his friend’s passing.
While “One For Road” tells the time-tested story of the end of a romantic relationship. Simpson croons, as only he can do in a deep Kentucky drawl, about the inevitability of the end of the relationship and the pain he knows he will inflict on his partner by doing so. But in turn, listeners can feel how much he, himself, is affected by the hammer blow he knows he must deliver to his significant other.
The album, like Simpson’s persona, is not all doom and gloom. The Jimmy Buffet-esque “Scooter Blues” addresses Simpson’s desire to run off to Thailand and live a life far away from fame and fortune.
But it is, like most of Simpson’s music, an album about discovery. It is an album about the struggles that life will intrinsically, and repeatedly, how those struggles shape our lives, and how we grow and change as human beings because of them.
Simpson is mold-breaking. Passage Du Desir is, like the Simpson albums before it, mold-breaking. And it is yet another display of the genius of one of the music world’s most under-appreciated artists.