As Johnny Blue Skies, Sturgill Simpson Sounds Only Like Himself

You have to hand it to Sturgill Simpson: He found a loophole in his own “quit after five albums” retirement plan. In April, Sturgill informed the world that he will now be known as Johnny Blue Skies. With the new name came the announcement of a new album out today, Passage Du Desir, as well as his first major tour since the mid-2010s. After all, it’s not as if Sturgill made any promises about not making a new “Johnny Blue Skies” record, did he? (Rest assured that Sturgill has promised, cheekily, that Johnny will also perform Sturgill Simpson material while out on the road.)

It was a classic Sturgill Simpson (er, JBS?)-style move, both amusingly perverse and weirdly predictable. Nobody has threatened to quit the music business more times in recent years than Sturgill Simpson. (At this point he makes Johnny Paycheck look like a loyal company man.) And yet he always seems to find a way back. Herein lies the central paradox of the Sturgill/JBS persona, which can be summed up thusly: He is a man who hides in plain sight. When I interviewed him in 2020, he responded favorably when I likened him to a country-music Frank Ocean. Frank isn’t a “thirsty bitch” when it comes to media attention, Simpson crowed, and implied that he wasn’t, either. But Ocean hasn’t put out a new album in eight years, and he’s mostly stayed under the rarar. Meanwhile Passage Du Desir is Sturgill’s eighth album released in the past 11 years. He might be perceived as some kind of elusive enigma, but he’s actually been a relatively prolific and accessible presence for more than a decade.

(That’s right: Simpson has put out seven albums, not five, under his own name. I suppose the argument is that the two volumes of Cuttin’ Grass records released in 2020, which featured bluegrass reworkings of old songs, don’t technically count as “real” Sturgill LPs. Perhaps the RIAA — or even the federal government — needs to establish an accredited agency that can make official rulings on controversial discography matters such as this one.)

The new moniker naturally invited speculation about what Passage Du Desir — which wasn’t previewed with advance singles — would sound like. A continuation of the stripped-down acoustic era capped by 2021’s The Ballad Of Dood & Juanita seemed unlikely. Was he going to push further into the stoner rock-slash-disco hybrids of 2019’s bracing and underrated Sound & Fury? Or would he really upset the traditionalist country applecart and elaborate upon the electronic pop he dabbled in with Diplo (under the Johnny Blue Skies name) in 2023?

Turns out that Sturgill, once again, was a whole lot more visible than he appeared to be. Two important advance clues pointed the way forward for Passage Du Desir. The first was the decision to reunite with his 2010s era backing band, including ace prodigal guitarist Laur Joamets. The second comes from the liner notes of A Sailor’s Guide To Earth, Sturgill’s mainstream coming-out party from 2016, which includes the cryptic warning: “Beware the dread pirate Johnny Blue Skies.”

Countless eagle-eyed Sturgill fans have noticed the connection, but they couldn’t have imagined how literal it was in terms of hinting at the sound of Passage Du Desir. But now that the album is out in the world, this much is clear: Sturgill Simpson’s first music under a different name is the closest he’s come to making a “classic” sounding Sturgill Simpson LP in quite some time. In true paradoxical Sturgill Simpson fashion, being someone else has given him permission to be more like himself.

Frankly, it sounds like the record that his label would have killed for in 2019 rather than cage-rattling provocation that was Sound & Fury. The album-opening “Swamp Of Sadness” immediately sets the tone, nodding to A Sailor’s Guide To Earth lyrically (he sings about being “a drunken sailor lost and lonely”) and musically, with warm organ fills and a lightly choogling rhythm section playing off of Sturgill’s bluesy guitar licks. It’s an inviting and amiable sound that unmistakably evokes the record that garnered Sturgill’s first and only Album Of The Year Grammy nomination, before he was sent down an opposing path of contrarianism and rebellion.

Only now, under this semi-ridiculous (okay, full on ridiculous) new name, Sturgill has apparently reclaimed the R&B-accented Americana vibe that originally made him a star. “If The Sun Never Rises Again” is another guitar-heavy mid-tempo rocker, with Sturgill’s stinging leads recalling Albert King with a slick John Mayer makeover. In “Scooter Blues,” he fantasizes once again about leaving the music business, only now he’s kickboxing in flop-flops on the beaches of Thailand. And yet any potential bile is leavened by music that suggests War’s “Spill The Wine” as reimagined by Jimmy Buffett.

Sturgill’s inclination to experiment with genre exercises remains in place on Passage Du Desir, but for the most part the anti-industry testiness that infuses his post-Sailor’s Guide work is largely absent. The southern-rock psychedelia of twin closers “Mint Tea” and “One For The Road” feel like acknowledgments of the jam-band wing of his fanbase, which will certainly make up a sizable part of his audiences on the forthcoming tour. (On the former song he emulates the Allman Brothers while the latter number is a nine-minute epic that points solidly in the direction of the Grateful Dead with a dash of Tumbleweed Connection era Elton John.) Both are excellent showcases for Sturgill’s guitar playing, which dominates Passage Du Desir like no other studio album that he’s made aside from Sound & Fury.

All of which is to say that Passage Du Desir is the most patio-friendly music of Sturgill’s music career. And for the most part that’s a good thing, though as a Sound & Fury truther I do find the comparable chill-bro-ness of this record to be a touch less thrilling. If A Sailor’s Guide was an accidental Grammy-baiting album, this feels like Sturgill’s most “intentional Grammy shit” record imaginable. It is smooth, carefully considered music, and positively yacht-rock-ian.

Of course, Sturgill leaning into what he does so well — as he does on “Who I Am,” his most overt Waylon Jennings homage since 2013’s High Top Mountain — shouldn’t be taken for granted. “They don’t ask what your name is when you get up to heaven,” he sings in that imitable drawl. “And thank god.” But what does a name mean anyway? On Passage Du Desir, Sturgill Simpson knows exactly who he is.