{"product_id":"simon-joyner-tough-love-2lp","title":"Simon Joyner - Tough Love 2LP","description":"\u003cp class=\"\" style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\"\u003eFor over 30 years, Simon Joyner has been an anomaly--a wholly independent artist focused solely on his craft. The Omaha-based singer-songwriter began releasing music in the early ‘90s, and has walked an unbroken line ever since. Joyner’s songs of quiet joy and heartache have impacted different generations of fellow artists, showing up as overt influence in acts like Bright Eyes or Kevin Morby, and as flickers of shared perspectives in the Lenkers, Oldhams, and Molinas that followed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"\" style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eTough Love\u003c\/em\u003e, Joyner’s 19th studio album, continues this upward trend. While intrinsically linked to the personal grief of 2024’s \u003cem\u003eCoyote Butterfly\u003c\/em\u003e, the autobiographical album Joyner made in the wake of his son’s death, this new album explores the concept of tough love as a dichotomy applied to various fictional relationships including romantic, familial, and political. This balancing act comes through in vivid portrayals of everyday heartache and in the exploration of political rage and the betrayals of the American Dream.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"\" style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\"\u003e One of the marvels of Joyner’s catalog is how his patterns don’t repeat but transform. Knowing nods to Cohen, Dylan, and the Velvets have been part of his songwriting since the early lo-fi days, but the ways these touchstones get infused keep changing. While Joyner’s ragged acoustic songs are in the spotlight, they’re prodded by electric guitars and imbued with experimental tendencies. Rock songs split the difference between minimal grooves learned from \u003cem\u003eLoaded\u003c\/em\u003e-era Velvet Underground and the ecstatic rhythmic weirdness of Can. By the time we arrive at the penultimate track, “Anniversary Song,” the ghost vocals and scratches of microtonal synth have blurred the lines between Joyner’s folk singer heart and his avant garde spirit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"\" style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\"\u003e All of this leads to the 20-minute title track which closes \u003cem\u003eTough Love\u003c\/em\u003e, an eviscerating plunge into a seemingly bottomless pit of regret, survivor’s guilt, and unvarnished grief. Borrowing a repetitious structure from Lou Reed’s narrated suite, “Street Hassle,” and combined with the full-side testimonial of Dylan’s “Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” Joyner narrates from the perspective of his departed son speaking to his father and laying out his every failure and brutally highlighting how none of it can be undone.  Soon, though, this agony opens up into something transcendent, in both its elegant imagery and ethereal atmospherics. The final moments of the album grant permission for self-forgiveness and hopefully someday, understanding.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"\" style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\"\u003e This cathartic ending snaps into place all of the tangled feelings which thread through \u003cem\u003eTough Love\u003c\/em\u003e.  Much as Joyner has approached songcraft from obtuse angles that change every time he picks up the guitar to make a new album, his relationship with grief and everyday struggle and the eternal reach for something brighter changes on \u003cem\u003eTough Love\u003c\/em\u003e as well. Again, the meaning deepens, breathing in transformation with every strum, every unexpected observation, and every weighty sigh.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"\" style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\"\u003eBB*Island, 2026\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BB*Island","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58117798756697,"sku":null,"price":33.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0297\/7523\/3163\/files\/simon_toughlove.jpg?v=1779441100","url":"https:\/\/discreetmusic.myshopify.com\/products\/simon-joyner-tough-love-2lp","provider":"Discreet Music","version":"1.0","type":"link"}