Omaha, Nebraska-based singer/songwriter Simon Joyner has been making brilliant records since the dawn of the '90s, informing multiple waves of independent music with his poetic lyricism and expertly crafted narrative folk songs. Songs from a Stolen Guitar continues a run of staggeringly powerful records that began roughly a decade earlier with Joyner's 2012 double album Ghosts. Since Ghosts, Joyner's writing has grown increasingly personal and taken on a new poignancy, with subsequent albums like 2015's Grass, Branch & Bone and 2019's Pocket Moon finding a more refined, reflective side of the visceral beauty that crackled in earlier, more lo-fi work. A weighty sadness strikes through that beauty on Songs from a Stolen Guitar, as Joyner ruminates on loss, memory, and isolation. The key influences have been apparent throughout Joyner's career are still present in these nine songs, namely the patient delivery of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan's warped wordplay, or the rural melancholia of Townes Van Zandt or certain moments of Johnny Cash's discography. At this point, however, Joyner has incorporated all of these influences into something that's more his own than a mirroring of anyone else's talents. The sorrowful memoriam of "Gone Too Soon" might bring to mind any of these reference points, but Joyner's distinctive rasp, strikingly raw lyrical turns, and touches of cosmic chamber pop in the arrangement all congeal into something only he could make. "The Stolen Guitar" is one of the more naked statements of the album, recalling Joyner's first experiences with writing songs, touching on the mix of euphoria and insecurity that comes from putting yourself wholly into your art. Throughout the album there are multiple scenes of solitary contemplation, loneliness, or isolation. "Live in the Moment" shuffles through surreal images of a paranoid shut-in pacing around his basement, memories of Joyner's parents before he was born, and tornadoes unspooling, all stitched together with gently woozy acoustic strums and softly twinkling keys. Created through remote collaboration due to concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the arrangements on Stolen Guitar go to different places than previous albums. The sound is markedly spare, with lingering viola, uncertain backing vocals, and unconventional percussion sounds all emphasizing the distanced recording process and giving the songs a noticeable undercurrent of uneasiness. This uneasiness melts into resolution on the lengthy closer "In The Morning," as Joyner stares at hardships and strange times for the duration of the song's eight minutes, eventually coming to understand every heaviness as an inextricable component of joy. Songs from a Stolen Guitar is among the stormier of Joyner's albums, but its stark atmospheres and disquieted moods remain thoughtful and perceptive when they could easily wallow. It's a particularly haunted chapter in Joyner's body of work, but as with so many of his other albums, he sculpts these tentative moods and lingering anxieties into something quietly magnificent.
Fred Thomas