Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds
Mutiny After Midnight
HIGH TOP MOUNTAIN
Sturgill Simpson has adopted a lot of personas over the years, some assumed and others foisted upon him. First he was the country-rock savior, then the metamodern psych-rock troubadour, then the bluegrass maestro. Now, for the second album in a row, he’s a new man entirely: Johnny Blue Skies. And while I’m certain Simpson loves rocking shows for up to three hours and traveling the globe with his band The Dark Clouds, I would argue that the biggest throughline of Simpson’s career has been his unerring commitment to remaining as slippery a character as possible—completely unafraid of pissing people off, and perhaps even titillated by the idea of it. Which is why the notion of Simpson releasing a physical-only record featuring, in his words, “unfiltered, unapologetic, relentless disco-hedonism” is actually not all that surprising.
While 2024’s debut as Johnny Blue Skies wrangled the disparate parts of Simpson’s discography into his best collection of tunes, Mutiny After Midnight throws the throttle down, turns the choogle up to 11, and stares the cold world dead in the eyes like it just mowed down a line of something potent. It’s an aim made clear from the opener, in which Simpson punctuates an insistence on making America “Fuk” again with the declaration that he’s gonna “make a hooker fuck around and fall in love.” The other objective is to be as nakedly political as he’s ever been. For all the tongue-in-cheekness of it, Mutiny After Midnight is determined to make crystal clear Simpson’s views on everything from face-masked ICE agents to unsustainable greed, manufactured chaos to the fascists that uphold it. At times this flirts with full-scale nihilism as Simpson and his band remain as groovy as ever, as on “Everyone Is Welcome,” a testament to everything not worth believing in “’cause nothing ever changes and it’s all the same.” Despite the “disco-hedonism,” these lines could become almost painfully earnest if it weren’t for the complete commitment of all involved.
Mutiny After Midnight best captures the perpetual boogie that makes the Johnny Blue Skies live show so impressive. You get the sense that this record is almost ancillary to the tour that will accompany it, one that will likely see the band stretch each of these modest-length songs well beyond the 10-minute mark. For now, these songs exist only in physical format (save a video for the extremely sexy “Situation”), and it’s a gambit that appears to be paying off after Mutiny debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart, despite having no digital sales contributing to its total. It’s a testament to the cult of Simpson that a record that largely avoids any of the country-rock signifiers which gave him his early cache, and that embraces themes aimed at pissing off at least a segment of his audience, would not only perform well but exceed expectations. Simpson perhaps put it best in a post touting the record’s early returns: “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
