Hiss Golden Messenger

Serving as an outlet for singer and songwriter Michael Taylor, also known as M.C. Taylor, together with multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer Scott Hirsch, Hiss Golden Messenger has mixed classic rock, folk-pop, and sparse blues across shifting forms, prompting comparisons of Taylor to lo-fi figures such as Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Bill Callahan. Although one of Taylor’s earliest statements under the Hiss Golden Messenger name, the stark 2010 voice-and-guitar recording Bad Debt, took shape at home, most subsequent work with Hirsch expanded in scope by folding blues, country, soul, R&B, and boogie rock into the emotional range of Taylor’s writing. That music readily moved between introspection and buoyant joy, with 2013’s Haw, 2021’s Quietly Blowing It, and 2023’s Jump for Joy capturing Taylor at his most open.

Raised in Southern California, Michael Taylor first took up the guitar under the influence of his father, a musician who had performed with the pop group the Settlers, once an opening act for John Denver. Taylor’s initial collaboration with Scott Hirsch came in the hardcore punk band Ex-Ignota, yet the pull of the Beatles, the Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield proved stronger, prompting him to begin writing original material. In his late teens he relocated to San Francisco and fronted the country-rock band the Court and Spark, which issued four critically praised albums before splitting in 2007.

After moving to North Carolina, Taylor and Hirsch started documenting material as Hiss Golden Messenger, though Taylor initially performed live alone with acoustic guitar. Following the release of Country Hai East Cotton and the vinyl-only Root Work on their Heaven and Earth Magic Recording Company imprint, they signed with the U.K. label Black Maps, which issued Hiss Golden Messenger’s international debut, the nine-track acoustic mini-album Bad Debt, in 2010.

In 2011 the boutique imprint Paradise of Bachelors pressed a limited run of Poor Moon that sold out almost immediately, while the pair also put out Lord I Love the Rain on their own label. Tompkins Square reissued Poor Moon in 2012 along with the single “Jesus Shot Me in the Head” b/w “Jesus Dub,” and a live digital-only set, Plowed: Live in Bovina, appeared the same year. Light in the Attic released Haw in 2013.

Taylor has lectured in folklore at the college level, maintains the blog The Old Straight Track, and contributed to a music-education curriculum overseen by Quincy Jones. Paradise of Bachelors later reissued the long-unavailable Bad Debt, Hiss Golden Messenger’s first recording, whose remaining stock had been destroyed in the PIAS warehouse fire, adding bonus and unreleased tracks. In January 2014 Taylor signed with Merge Records, and the label issued Hiss Golden Messenger’s debut for the imprint, Lateness of Dancers, that September. Southern Grammar, a three-song EP named after a track from the prior album and containing one leftover session piece plus an orphaned song, followed in February 2015. After heavy touring, Taylor returned to Durham. In July 2016 Hiss Golden Messenger announced a new album on the Merge site ahead of a worldwide tour; Heart Like a Levee, recorded in Durham and co-produced by Taylor and Bradley Cook with backing vocalists Tift Merritt and Alexandra Sauser-Monnig among its close circle of collaborators, appeared in October after the pre-release single “Biloxi” was streamed.

In September 2017, following a summer of festival appearances and support dates for Mumford & Sons, Taylor released Hallelujah Anyhow and embarked on a headlining tour. Early in 2018 he worked with Virginia’s Spacebomb collective on two songs benefiting the nonprofit Everytown, which seeks to curb gun violence in America. That fall a limited deluxe retrospective box set, Devotion: Songs About Rivers and Spirits and Children, collected remastered editions of Bad Debt, Poor Moon, and Haw alongside the bonus album Virgo Fool of rarities exclusive to the package; each reissue carried new liner notes, with Amanda Petrusich contributing essays for the first three titles and John Mulvey writing for Virgo Fool. After a stretch of personal upheaval and trauma, Taylor shaped songs addressing his worries and his wish for recovery that became 2019’s Terms of Surrender, which featured a guest vocal from Jenny Lewis and contributions from Aaron Dessner of the National, who also recorded portions of the album at his upstate New York studio.

Early in 2021 Taylor issued the non-album track “Sanctuary.” He spent most of March through June 2020 in his home studio composing and arranging material shaped by America’s passage through upheaval, then brought his band into the studio for a week to record what became Quietly Blowing It. A second release arrived that October: O Come All Ye Faithful gathered traditional holiday songs, spiritually tinged pieces, and three original Taylor compositions. That same year Scott Hirsch released the solo album Windless Day, with Taylor adding mandolin. In 2022 Taylor and bassist Cameron Ralston formed the jazz-inflected instrumental project Revelators Sound System, which debuted with the album Revelators. A markedly more upbeat record than its predecessor, 2023’s Jump for Joy rooted its songs in cautious optimism while preserving a clear-eyed view of the world and drew on spirited ’70s soulful rock textures. Recorded over two weeks in Texas with Taylor producing and Hirsch engineering, the album was released by Merge in August 2023.