Simon Joyner - Songs From A Stolen Guitar LP

The latest from cult Omaha singer-songwriter Simon Joyner feels as though it’s going to be on repeat for a long while to come…

The simple sell would be that Joyner’s new album sits at a mid-point between Lou Reed and Townes Van Zandt. Backed by other Omaha greats like Megan Siebe and David Nance, the album has a kinda-country lilt to it while also nodding to the crystalline guitar leads of Sterling Morrison. But really, all this serves to foreground the lyrics. 

Joyner has that uncanny ability to distill language in a way that is economic yet unexpected. There’s a minimalism to his writing that evokes the tradition of mid-century US short story writing; trimming the fat of storytelling to get to the heart of a scene. Stories wind out of songs with lines so good they deserve to be quoted til they become cliches in a couple of decades (“I was hiding like a pulse on a newborn’s wrist,” “She said deja-vu is worth repeating,” “…a broken sunset spills before him” etc etc etc). An album that’s gonna keep on giving!
-Mitch (Repressed Records)