The album opens on the high seas, the same longitude where Sailor’s Guide left off. The Navy enabled him to see the world and find himself, but on “Swamp of Sadness,” the ocean is a place of confusion, peril, and suffering. Passage is wracked with tribulation, full of death and disconnection and dreams of escape. On the yacht-country “Scooter Blues,” ostensibly the album’s most upbeat song, Sturgill fantasizes about leaving Nashville and self-exiling to some unnamed island. The accumulation of details—rhyming “chocolate milk and Eggos” with “steppin’ on Legos,” taking up kickboxing to stay in shape—suggests that this is no idle reverie but a path to freedom: a way to lose one self and gain another. “Gonna hop on my scooter and go down to the store. When people say are you him, I’ll say not anymore.”If his lyrics address various strains of alienation, the music on Passage du Desir engages with all sorts of sounds and styles and scenes. He may be the only major Nashville artist who has Can and Amon Düül in his collection, who hears in ’70s country a kind of avant-garde impulse. Sturgill is at his most cosmic on “Jupiter’s Faerie,” which raises a glass to an old friend who died before they could make amends. The story is bound to Earth, but the music imagines an afterlife in the vacuum of space: a peaceful vision of heaven, at least for seven and a half minutes. On closer “One for the Road,” he indulges some of his shredding but without the aggression and ostentation of SOUND & FURY. That’s fitting for what sounds like a breakup song, especially one where he tries to remain stoic in the face of the pain he’s causing and feeling.All of this heartache is filtered through the persona of Sturgill the Grammy-nominated country artist, as though he can’t quite escape that particular identity. Songs about the glare of the spotlight can risk sounding hermetic at best and whiny at worst, especially when so many deserving artists would love to have their lives changed by a hit album. Wisely, Sturgill plays up alienation over celebrity, which makes these songs more relatable. Essentially, he’s echoing a very different Johnny: Take this job and shove it. Who hasn’t wondered who they are separate from what they do? Who hasn’t dreamed of shedding their responsibilities to play checkers on the beach? You might roll your eyes when Sturgill sings, “That old radio still won’t play me,” on “Who I Am,” especially considering he’s done a lot to ensure they don’t. But generally, for an artist so guarded and so prickly, Passage is focused outward rather than inward.Maybe you’ve noticed that I’m not referring to him here as Johnny Blue Skies. That’s not an act of catty defiance. I’m not dismissing his need to adopt a new name to make this album or get comfortable in his skin again, but there’s more Sturgill on Passage du Desir than there was on his past four full-lengths. So this isn’t his Camille and it likely won’t be his Chris Gaines either. Mr. Blue Skies sounds more like a conduit back to himself, a means of maintaining a consistent identity when the world insists on twisting and contorting him into someone else. “I’ve lost everything I am, even my name,” he laments on “Who I Am.” “They don’t ask you what your name is when you get up to heaven. And thank God, I couldn’t tell Her if I had to who I am.” He may go to his grave still wondering just who the fuck he is, but on Passage du Desire, he sounds more like himself than he has in ages.All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.Johnny Blue Skies / Sturgill Simpson: Passage du Desir
Source link
