Simon Joyner is among America’s best songwriters, so says Gillian Welch, Conor Oberst, Kevin Morby, and others. With his new double album, Step Into The Earthquake, he strikes for the personal while acknowledging that the times they are a-changin’ around us again. Things are leaning shitty right now, and the characters in Joyner’s songs experience the dissolution of comfort amid anxious concerns regarding our turbulent times. To record, Joyner’s band, The Ghosts, holed up with longtime collaborator, Michael Krassner (Boxhead Ensemble), in Omaha’s ARC Studio, developing songs from skeletal foundations to full-on group efforts. Joyner’s vision may be dark but it stops short of nihilism. Where do we go from here? The best move toward answering that question is knowing where we stand right now. This expansive album offers a poet’s truthful view, however disconcerting, that to survive whatever is coming for us, we have to confront and understand it first. So, go ahead and step into the earthquake
