Sturgill Simpson: High Top Mountain (10th anniversary edition, translucent black vinyl) [HIGH TOP MOUNTAIN]

Why you'll love it

This limited 10th anniversary edition comes on translucent black vinyl. Simpson paid for the album himself, it has sold more than 105,000 copies in the US, and critics at AllMusic and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel both heard Waylon Jennings in it.

This edition

• 10th anniversary edition
• Translucent black vinyl
• Limited edition

About the album

Sturgill Simpson named his first album after a cemetery near Jackson, Kentucky, where many of his family are buried, which tells you how close to home this one sits. He took his songs to Nashville producer Dave Cobb and made a hard-country record steeped in honky-tonk and old-school twang.

The band is stacked with veterans: Hargus "Pig" Robbins on piano, Robby Turner on steel guitar and bass, Chris Powell on drums, Bobby Emmett on organ and Mellotron, and Cobb himself on 12-string electric for "Time After All." "Life Ain't Fair and the World Is Mean" opens with a shrug and a grin, "Railroad of Sin" barrels along, "Old King Coal" digs into Kentucky mining country, and "You Can Have the Crown" is wry from start to finish. Vance Powell engineered and mixed it at Sputnik Sound in Nashville.

It entered Top Country Albums at No. 47, then climbed back to No. 31 in 2014 once Metamodern Sounds in Country Music made Simpson a name. Record Collector called it an absolute stormer of a first album. A debut that took its time catching on, which in country music is practically a tradition.

Also at Kops: more Sturgill Simpson on vinyl · browse Country

Tracklist

Listen

On High Top Mountain (cat# 71885LP10YR), a reissue of the 2013 album.