SIMON JOYNER - Tough Love

Thirty years of career, more than twenty albums, but above all a commendable artistic integrity: Simon Joyner has won his own battle against the record industry and the lure of success, coming through the toughest years for rock music unscathed.

"Tough Love" is the latest chapter of a still-compelling story, an album that keeps alive the tradition of Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, the very same tradition that has found new points of reference in artists like Will Oldham and Kevin Morby. It's not hard to see why Joyner's peers keep singing his praises and pointing to him as a constant source of inspiration: the last ten years have brought five small gems whose poetic clarity and musical incisiveness are as intense as they are fluid and limpid.

"Tough Love" once again shows off the remarkable command of a songwriter with a sure touch, whether he's lingering on a handful of chords or embracing melodic surges of rare incisiveness, and in this sense the line tucked into the raw, essential harmonic weave of "Allegiances" is telling: "Isn't it magic when the sacred gives way to the profane?". Yes, the Oklahoma musician's songs are profane poems, yet perfectly set within a sonic context blessed with a gift for spirituality. Every word seems delivered with force and conviction, but also with tenderness and melancholy. There's even a pop spirit hovering over songs like "Drowning Man", a track transfigured by a slowness that lends it an aching, caressing atmosphere worthy of Neil Young's "Time Fades Away".

The ever-present influences of Velvet Underground and Lou Reed are obviously palpable, not only in the languid vocal delivery of "Annelie", but also in the vibrant slow grunge with faint echoes of Television on "Isn't This How The Story Always Begins?", one of the album's central pieces, which brings out a dirtier sound, a trait that sets "Tough Love" apart from Joyner's recent work, an attitude further confirmed by the raw narrative of "In A Room Like This" and the gripping "Two Black Irises".

Simon Joyner's latest album is perhaps his most multicolored and elusive. It moves from the powerful narrative style of "Wild Palms" to the evanescent layering of microtonal synths on "Anniversary Song", letting simple, touching country ballads bloom in between ("Vagabond"), alongside songs as slight as they are intimate ("Winter Says", "Last Call For Karaoke").

The title track is undoubtedly a chapter of its own: Joyner once again confronts the grief of losing his son, but this time, unlike what he expressed in "Coyote Butterfly", the point of view isn't the author's but the deceased son's, a brutal list of broken promises and an unattainable act of redemption; the structure deliberately echoes Lou Reed's "Street Hassle": exhausting and painful, the song slides toward agony and mute despair, which Joyner skillfully manages to capture in a few dramatic words: "I watch you turn and, just like that, you're gone".

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29/05/2026