


I remembered who I was at 16 when I’d argue with faux-hillbilly boys about what America should and shouldn’t be. This is what great protest music does-it wakes you. I couldn’t be one of those people anymore-someone who tunes out bad news because narcissistic frivolity is more fun. It was right around this number of troops who lost their lives in Iraq the first time, at the hands of a war about pride and oil that large swaths of the population chose to ignore long before it even ended. Five years since we officially withdrew troops from Iraq, our military presence there continues to creep upwards-toward nearly 5,000 troops, as of this spring-in an effort to take back Mosul from ISIL. The first time I heard “Call to Arms” back in March, it felt exactly like what Simpson’s weighty title promised. By the end, the burgeoning maverick surmises-with a festering rancor rarely heard on major-label country albums anymore-“Bullshit’s got to go.” He burns down everything in pursuit of the “truth,” with an urgency as if this is life or death. the Dap-Kings) and honky-tonk pianists who eventually crescendo out of control. Simpson channels his jaded disgust into a rollicking rager and staffs the shindig’s band with Stax-loving horn players (i.e. Nobody’s looking up to care about a drone All too busy looking down at our phone Our ego’s begging for food like a dog from our feed Refreshing obsessively until our eyes start to bleed They serve up distractions and we eat them with fries Until the bombs fall out of our fucking skiesĪnd yet “Call to Arms” often overflows with pure and unstoppable musical joy. With this concept in mind, Simpson brings something entirely new to a song as ubiquitous as Nirvana’s “In Bloom”: Where Cobain sang about lamestreamer fans who couldn’t understand his band’s gravity, Simpson seems to have a more literal take on the chorus couplet: “And he likes to shoot his gun/But he don’t know what it means.” The record is written from the point of view of a sailor unsure if he’ll come back alive, in the form of a letter to his wife and young son at home.
#STURGILL SIMPSON CALL TO ARMS LYRICS HOW TO#
“Don’t have to do a goddamn thing ’cept sit around and wait to die,” Simpson boasts on the indelible single “Living the Dream.” But by this spring’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, Kentucky’s finest singer-songwriter claimed to know a thing or two about how to live. Call to Arms surveys the evils of the world: terrorism, missile tests. Lyrics for Call to Arms by Sturgill Simpson. This album is pure cosmic trash, and I couldn’t love it more. Sturgill Simpsons A Sailors Guide to Earth is the rare album that traverses. But it was Sturgill Simpson’s 2014 LP Metamodern Sounds in Country Music that really brought me back into the fold. Call to Arms Lyrics by Sturgill Simpson from the A Sailors Guide to Earth album - including song video, artist biography, translations and more: I done. The turning point was probably the 2013 release of Kacey Musgraves’ “ Follow Your Arrow,” a do-what-you-want declaration inclusive of gay folks and stoners and straight-up weirdos. After that, I avoided country music for a long time.
