Simon Joyner is a renowned American singer-songwriter who first came to prominence during the Lo-Fi movement of the early ’90s alongside contemporaries mining similar territory, like Will Oldham, Peter Jefferies, the Mountain Goats, Smog, and Alastair Galbraith. Joyner was championed early by the late British DJ, John Peel, who famously played Joyner’s 1994 LP, The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll, start to finish on one of his BBC programs, initially making Joyner more well known overseas than in his own country. Considered a forefather of the Omaha music scene, he’s been releasing critically acclaimed albums on various independent labels every few years for over two decades. He keeps a low profile and tours only occasionally, spending most of his time working and raising a family, allowing writing and music to remain an artistic outlet rather than an occupation.
Grass, Branch & Bone is Joyner’s thirteenth proper album and a sonic departure from 2012’s Ghosts. While his last record was a double album of dark, dissonant songs confronting death and loss in the vein of Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night, this new album is sparse by comparison. Grass, Branch & Bone is a song cycle of short stories about time and memory, full of people you’ve known and people you’ve been.
Stream the album’s first single “You Got Under My Skin” on Stereogum. The album is available for pre-order now in digital and LP formats.