Simon Joyner- Tough Love

On Tough Love, Simon Joyner's 19th album, the Omaha songwriter confronts parental loss and political disillusionment across a set of fictional portraits that grow increasingly raw until a 20-minute closing title track shatters into something close to absolution. Three decades into a career that’s shaped everyone from Conor Oberst to Kevin Morby, Joyner remains constitutionally incapable of returning to the well, driving avant-garde instincts through acoustic folk in the way of an elder virtuoso.