In celebration of its ten-year anniversary, a new special edition reissue of Sturgill Simpson’s landmark 2014 album, Metamodern Sounds In Country Music, is out today on High Top Mountain Records/Thirty Tigers (stream/purchase). Originally released May 13, 2014, the album marked a career breakthrough for Simpson personally and proved to be a seismic shift-maker within the larger country music genre.
The new special edition features a fully reimagined album cover and vinyl package, pressed on 180g Black Vinyl with an “Old-Style” Tip-On Jacket. Full details are available at sturgillsimpson.com.
Ushering in a new chapter within country music and setting the stage for countless other outsider artists to push the genre forward for years to come, the lasting impact of Metamodern continues to be felt today. In a recent piece reflecting on the album’s influence and importance, Marissa Moss writes in Rolling Stone, “Ten years since its release, Simpson’s 2014 masterpiece Metamodern Sounds in Country Music continues to redefine what’s possible in Nashville,” and continues, “Metamodern is an album that shows how the best music can come when you’re respectful of the past but fearless about the future.”
Recorded live-to-tape in four dates, the album features Simpson alongside his original band—bassist Kevin Black, guitarist Laur Joamets and drummer Miles Miller. Of the album, Simpson shared in 2014, “Myriad worldly offerings—religion, drugs, and more—all claim to be the omnipotent universal truth, but in my experience, love is the only certainty. That’s what this record is about.”
Named one of Rolling Stone’s “Greatest Country Albums of All Time” in 2022, The New York Times called it, “one of the most jolting country albums in recent memory, and one that achieves majesty with just the barest of parts,” while Stereogum asserted, “will endure as one of this young century’s best traditionalist country records” and The Faderaffirmed, “a take on the genre that seemed totally renegade to where country sits in popular culture now, and wholly in line with its original principles.” The album landed on best-of the year lists at numerous publications including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop, NPR Music, American Songwriter, Stereogum, the Los Angeles, Times, Pitchfork, Paste, KCRW, The Washington Post, the Nashville Scene and many more. In the year following its release, Simpson performed on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “Conan” and the “Late Show with David Letterman” and was featured on the BBC’s “Later Live with Jools Holland,” “Later…with Jools Holland” and NPR Music’s “Tiny Desk Concert.”
Simpson will perform his first full shows in three years later this summer and fall with headlining festival sets at both Outside Lands and Austin City Limits. For the performances, Simpson will reunite with bassist Kevin Black, guitarist Laur Joamets and drummer Miles Miller.
STURGILL SIMPSON CONFIRMED TOUR DATES
August 9-11—San Francisco, CA—Outside Lands
October 4-6—Austin, TX—Austin City Limits Music Festival
October 11-13—Austin, TX—Austin City Limits Music Festival
