ALBUM REVIEW: Hiss Golden Messenger’s Heart Like a Levee
Heart Like a Levee
By Hiss Golden Messenger
October 7, 2016
Merge Records
Reviewed by Christopher Wolford
I can honestly say Heart Like a Levee isn’t just the album of the year, it’s the one we need to get through it.
A track-by-track annotated guide
Side A
1. Biloxi – The scene is set: the new south where the old still haunts, life pushes & pulls like a river—sink, fight, or float along.
2. Tell Her I’m Just Dancing – Fire, a river’s foil, carries smoke to heaven, where we cannot go, blinds, leads us away from the sacred stream.
3. Heart Like a Levee – Building & building, the heart holds all it can until it breaks. It pours & pours, washing us away to new places.
4. Like a Mirror Loves a Hammer – The empty heart can only float. There’s a need to destroy everything, leave it all behind.
5. Smoky’s Song – A chance to come up for air. Reflect at daybreak. Breathe deep if it’s your last. A sonic redemption, baptism by sound.
6. Cracked Windshield – The stream meets the empty sky. All men, in heaven, on earth, go tumbling down. But nothing grows in one place.
flip the record…
Side B
7. As the Crow Flies – Swim to the surface. Death flies higher than smoke, comes down when it wants. Don’t forget this. Death never will…
8. Happy Day (Sister My Sister) – And the living are everywhere, drowning without hands to haul them to the surface. You have two strong ones.
9. Say It Like You Mean It – A hurried sermon. But nobody’ll believe a word if you look back without the will to keep up with the current.
10. Ace of Cups Hung Low Band – A minor arcana, five streams converge. Love doesn’t sleep on the riverbed, but it’s within reach. Pluck it.
11. Highland Grace – Every river spits you out into the sea. Swim to shore, look out at a new world, wider, deeper than any before it.
Christopher Wolford is a music fan and writer, in that order. He is the Managing Editor for BULL and a frequent contributor to Split Lip Magazine. He lives in Bloomington, IN. You can find him promoting all his favorite artists here.