For M.C. Taylor, music is a robust kind of miracle. Creating a song or just hearing one can replenish your spirits during hard times, and even an untested but enthusiastic band can instantly bind people together onstage and off. “Seneca (Time Is a Mother, Baby),” off Hiss Golden Messenger’s 12th studio album I’m People, opens in a small club somewhere out in America, where Taylor has waited in line for a local group that “played the songs alright.” The scene is reassuringly human, partly because live shows are one of the few spaces where AI has yet to gain a foothold and partly because those songs make him feel like a part of something much bigger. “Take me out and put me in that crowd,” he sings as the music pulses benignly. “Feel alive for a moment.” Anyone who’s ever been to an even halfway decent show can relate: These are his people, and he’s their people, too. It’s such a profound moment that Taylor repeats the scene on “Who You Gonna Run To?” (“I’ve never felt so perfect”) and even in the youthful reminiscence of “Last Orders” (“I’m gonna sing this song forever”). That sense of belonging is endlessly renewable.
Through Hiss Golden Messenger, Taylor writes songs primarily about community: his family and friends, of course, but also fans, fellow troubadours and creators, teachers, parents, and any likeminded person worried about the fate of their country. It is both a theme and a practice. Over the years, Hiss Golden Messenger has grown from Taylor at his kitchen table to something like a collective with an ever-shifting membership. The touring lineup remains fairly stable, but there’s a new crew of players on every album. As a result, his last few albums sound much more expansive and festival-ready, with songs that barely submerge their inspirations (the Dead, Van Morrison) and traffic in broad proclamations about life, joy, love, freedom, and perseverance. His first album after leaving Merge Records for Chrysalis, I’m People is his best effort in nearly a decade precisely because the music sounds emphatic, insistent, unselfconscious in its celebrations. Taylor doesn’t try to force the miracle; he just lets it be.
Each Hiss Golden Messenger album is a reflection of the community that made it, and I’m People is full of new and old faces. Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman co-produces. He also assembled a loose crew that includes members of Rising Appalachia, the Mountain Goats, I’m With Her, and the Spacebomb house band. It’s not a rock album necessarily, but songs like “In the Middle of It” and “Shaky Eyes” have the momentum of rock, which lends clarity and conviction to Taylor’s lyrics. Perhaps the reminiscence that inspired “Last Orders,” about his first forays into punk, helped to enliven these songs, or maybe this band just clicks. “Heavy World” is anchored in a dub bassline that makes the song sound especially slippery, while “Spirit Cat” nestles in a bed of woodland synths. And Bruce Hornsby adds jazzy eddies and rivulets of piano to the hymnlike closing track, “Depends on the River,” nimbly playing around Taylor’s preacherly vocals and Sam Beam’s airy interjections.
That quiet resolve of that song hits harder than the drama of the title track. “I’m people,” Taylor declares on the title track. “You’re people. We’re people… who need people.” It’s a quaint, compassionate expression of community, yet it’s impossible to hear him sing those words and not think of Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl. Surely that’s not intentional, although his lyrics are full of references to the artists whose work offers him solace: “Seneca (Time Is a Mother, Baby)” quotes the poet Ocean Vuong, and “Depends on the River” includes a clunky reference to the Dead’s “Candyman.” Even as he surrounds himself with talented folks, Taylor can still sound far too earnest to land a complex political statement. However, because his idealism is rooted in a hippie naivete, I’m People makes even its cringiest moments sound humane and endearing—less like a self-parody and more like a man trying his damnedest to live up to his responsibilities as an artist. Like that band in “Seneca” he’s doing alright up there, and that’s more than enough for the miracle.
