• News

• All

Mar 08, 2021 By Mark Redfern Photography by Chris Frisina

Hiss Golden Messenger (the project of M.C. Taylor) has announced a new album, Quietly Blowing It, and shared a new song from it, “If It Comes in the Morning,” via a video for the single. Quietly Blowing It is due out June 25 via Merge. Check out the “If It Comes in the Morning” video below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art.

KidEthnic directed “If It Comes in the Morning” video, which was shot in Oxford, NC, and features actor, playwright, and activist Mike Wiley.

Taylor had this to say about the new single in a press release: “‘If It Comes in the Morning’ was a song that was written in the spring and early summer of 2020. The country was on fire, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘What comes next?’ Initially, I didn’t know how much hope to include in the song—I wasn’t feeling particularly hopeful myself in that moment—but I felt that it was important to remember that whatever happened, most of us were going to be fortunate enough to be given another day in which to enact what I feel are the most important and fundamental parts of being alive: joy, love, peace, the willingness to keep moving forward whether the cards fall in our favor or not. And in remembering, at least, that these feelings exist, I suppose it became a song of hope. The Staple Singers and Curtis Mayfield were very good at writing these kinds of songs, and I suppose I was looking to their music as inspiration for ‘If It Comes in the Morning.’ When I got stumped on a verse, I called my friend Anaïs Mitchell, and she got me straightened out. I’m very thankful for her help.”

In the press release Taylor says Quietly Blowing It “feels like the most personal album that I’ve made because I’m not trying to explain anything to anyone except myself.”

Special guests on the album include Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, Zach Williams of The Lone Bellow, Nashville guitarist Buddy Miller, and producer/musician Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman and Muzz.

The album features “Sanctuary,” a new song Hiss Golden Messenger shared in January.

The band’s most recent album, Terms of Surrender, was released back in 2019 on Merge. The album includes the songs “I Need a Teacher” (which was one of our Songs of the Week) and “Cat’s Eye Blue.”

Quietly Blowing It Tracklist:

01 Way Back in the Way Back
02 The Great Mystifier
03 Mighty Dollar
04 Quietly Blowing It
05 It Will If We Let It
06 Hardlytown
07 If It Comes in the Morning
08 Glory Strums (Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner)
09 Painting Houses
10 Angels in the Headlights
11 Sanctuary

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.