Out Into the Snow seems an odd title for a Simon Joyner album. His music is often desolate, to be sure, but I can't say it's ever felt cold. Also, from his songs it doesn't seem like Joyner ever goes out-- his poetic lyrics give me the feel of a cloistered life, like he spends his days alone projecting himself into characters that face life for him. He's not just a little like Leonard Cohen, and that extends from the feeling his recordings embody to the way he sings. His voice is a broken instrument, gesturing toward melody as much as actually singing it, and it could be a sticking point for a lot of listeners. He's had that style for almost 20 years now, so fans are used to it, even love it, and you can see it a couple of ways. Some will hear a voice that can't convey its songs, while others will hear a powerful foil for the ramshackle country/folk/chamber backing of his band, not to mention a croak that reflects the tone of the writing.
I admit that even as a seasoned Joyner listener, there are still moments where I wish he'd just hit the note, and on this record, there is one song where that's the case. Closer "Roll On" is a mid-tempo country tune soaked in pedal steel guitar, saloon piano, and backing vocals by Sarah Gleason and Pearl Lovejoy Boyd that all roll along just fine, apart from the fact that Joyner is just kind of tunelessly there in the mix. It has the effect of your drunk friend singing along to the band in a bar, and while that can be fun while it lasts, you wouldn't want to listen to a playback of it the next day. The other tempos are slower, the music less celebratory, and the songs more suited to his style.
At the other end of the record, the nine-minute opener "The Drunken Boat" is a masterful drifter's narrative that moves seamlessly in its middle from understated country backing to dark chamber folk dominated by Laraine Kaizer's intricate string arrangement-- the point where the song makes the full transition is perhaps the biggest surprise in his whole discography, and the song's final third is pretty breathtaking, getting progressively lusher until Joyner is left behind by the violins as they spiral off into silence. Kaizer's sympathetic arrangements help make a couple of other tracks, too, especially "Ambulances", where the fluttering strings and ghostly backing harmonies create a haunted atmosphere. As the electric piano, glockenspiel, pedal steel, and acoustic guitars pile up on top of those elements, it makes for an almost comically full arrangement for such a skeletal song.
For a guy who's much more a poet than a singer, Joyner seems to love a good musical flourish, and he doesn't miss many opportunities for one here. He goes for a different flavor on "Last Evening on Earth", with the band laying down an inky blues-noir track to accompany lines like "the moon crashed in your whiskey glass and it took away all your friends." Out Into the Snow is another solid entry in a long career for Joyner, and it seems his place as the dark observer on the indie world's fringe is pretty well set. And that's fine-- this is music that needs time to settle and grow into you, and that's a mission often best accomplished away from the harshest glare of spotlights.
