Review: Sturgill Simpson’s latest album is disco but through a dark mirrorball

Just in case you were wondering if Sturgill Simpson still has the ability to surprise, the answer is now in.

It’s a resounding “Yep.”

We had already been tipped off that the Grammy-winning Breathitt County-born song stylist was going to drop his second album under the artistic nom de plume of Johnny Blue Skies on March 13. Furthermore, the limited details confirmed a title of “Mutiny After Midnight,” a new support band name of The Dark Clouds (blue skies and dark clouds?) and an admission that the intent behind the new music was “to make a dance album.”

A surprise? Well, sort of. Then Mr. Blue Skies shuffled the deck, released the album two weeks early and posted the whole thing on YouTube for anyone to listen to for free.

Surprise!

There was no forewarning about the rushed release. It just happened. Call it an artistic impulse, an eccentricity or a gimmick. Regardless of the reason, Blues Skies have opened and what we’re hearing is, well, head-scratching.

Now that is no surprise.

“Mutiny After Midnight” is indeed a dance record, but not the kind of present day, electronica obsessed indulgence audiences might expect — you know, another beat-driven manifesto credited to a dozen different artists, writers and producers.

No, the Johnny Blue Skies dance party tosses you into a time machine. In the era you land in, “Starsky & Hutch” is on the TV at the bar, mirror balls populate the ceilings and men’s lapels are big enough to take you windsurfing.

Referencing this music strictly as disco is a bit disingenuous. There is some of that sprinkled throughout “Mutiny After Midnight,” especially at the onset, where the album begins with the kind of quick whir that happens when a vinyl record and the stylus sitting upon it have been suddenly released from hand-held purgatory. Then the groove kicks in. It’s crisp, bright but fueled by a hearty organic spark, one largely generated by the generous use of guitar and real drums in both rhythmic and lead positions. The title? Well, being a family publication, we can’t really list it here since Mr. Blues Skies dropped an F bomb in middle of it.

But the album gets even more curious. The lyrics depict a kind of social rebirth, an awakening clarified by rhyming “obsolescence” with “anti-depressants.” From there, the song wavers between Donna Summer-style dance floor swagger and Joe Walsh-leaning guitar pageantry.

In short, tonight we’re going to party like it’s 1978.

Lyrically, the rest of “Mutiny After Midnight” is a real puzzler. At times, it gets eerily topical. The music is all late ’70s funk, rock and groove, right down to the glistening clavinet that propels “Stay on That.” But the narrative on “Excited Delirium” details, against music that is a little ELO and a little Jerry Lee Lewis, what sure sounds like an ICE raid — a push against resistance, a “conversation with fourteen fists” and a pair of uneasy questions: “Why are you dressed up like a soldier? What the hell are you wearing a face mask for?”

Go ahead. Dance to that.

But “Mutiny After Midnight” isn’t a politically dominant album. In fact, a good chunk of the lyrics come off as machismo-heavy come-ons that would be right in step with disco chic. Some of the wordplay is clever. Some of it sophomoric. Still, the jolt from ICE-land back to discoville is a bit jarring.

Things even out as “Mutiny After Midnight” heads into the home stretch. “Everyone is Welcome” offers a doomsday sentiment that seeps even into the chorus (“Everyone is welcome to drown here”) while the music glides along to a sleek, sax-savvy groove. The album-closing “Ain’t That a Bitch” cooks up churning, less disco-driven funk as the lyrics detail income disparity, prime time fascism, oligarchies and other party themes.

It all ends with ... clicks. No kidding. The tune bleeds into a tasty finale jam that fades into two minutes of slow, repetitive clicks — the kind you used to hear when a needle has completed its journey across one side of a vinyl album, but keeps wavering back and forth on the other side of the grooves until it is manually set free.

You know what you do then, don’t you? You turn it over and see what surprises await you on the flip side. Pretty heady stuff for a dance party.