Coyote Butterfly

Storied independent artist Simon Joyner is no stranger to sadness, with melancholy never too far from any given entry in his decades-long discography. However, the distinction between generalized sorrow and crushing grief is made very plain on Coyote Butterfly, an album Joyner made in the wake of his son Owen’s death in 2022. The emotional shockwaves of this tragedy can be felt in every piece of Coyote Butterfly, a collection of songs that wrestle with the complexities of loss, particularly how the death of a young person hurts on familial, communal, and individual levels. Joyner has long been a master of the protracted, many-versed, storytelling sad song. His most recent album of new material before this, 2022’s Songs from a Stolen Guitar, ruminated on isolation and the strange tricks time plays in songs that filtered the influences of Leonard Cohen, Dylan, and Townes Van Zandt through a variety of Joyner’s life experiences. The thematic focal point here is sharp and unwavering, with the almost Woody Guthrie-like simplicity of “I’m Taking You with Me” or the weary folk blues of “My Lament” plainspokenly, unmistakably addressing the regret, the survivor’s guilt, and just how much Joyner misses his son. "I let my dreams unfold so I might hold you/Now I wake with the ache of all I never told you," he sings on the heartbreakingly beautiful title track, a song so vulnerable that all of its raw, sometimes contradictory feelings blur; the pain, sorrow, anger, and forgiveness all combining into a new uneasy emotion. It’s a heavy listen, at times overpoweringly so. Even still, Coyote Butterfly stands apart from similar musical testaments to life-altering loss. Deeply unambiguous albums about death like Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked at Me or Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Skeleton Tree are examples of magnificent documents of human sorrow that some listeners might have a hard time listening to more than once, despite their artistic value. Joyner keeps beauty in sight even in the albums darkest moments, easing the intensity of the material to a degree. The country-folk shuffle of “The Silver Birch” is equal parts sadness and sweetness, with a chorus that feels almost hooky. The hymn-like “There Will be a Time” looks forward to a future when time softens the seemingly insurmountable despair Joyner and his family are suffering in the immediate aftermath of their loss, and the field recording-enhanced instrumentals that bookend the album seem to suggest that hope is present even in lifes lowest points. With Coyote Butterfly, Joyner extends listeners an invitation to walk with him through one of the most difficult passages of his life. The album does an amazing job of conveying how dealing with death is a journey with no destination, one spent looking for slivers of understanding and acceptance but knowing there will never be resolution. The way Joyner shares his pain with honesty and fearlessness makes these songs some of his most beautiful and connective and life-affirming even in their unimaginable grief. ~ Fred Thomas