Song Of The Day 5/18/2014: Sturgill Simpson - "Turtles All The Way Down"

We're flying without a theme this week. First time since February. No contextualizing, no half-cocked thesis -- just seven days of uncentered, ungrounded, untethered but beautiful music, starting with this country song about drugs.

Sturgill Simpson is the first country artist I've gotten excited about in awhile -- as Billboard notes, it may be because he's eschewing the currently popular male genre topics of "tailgating and spring break," and heading straight back to Waylon style, except with the looming threat of alien abduction. "Turtles All The Way Down" (I'm wondering if that's a Terry Pritchard Discworld reference) is a great, inherently messed-up song to begin with -- but wait until you see the video, which represents all the hopes and dreams of Terence McKenna discourse wedded to straight, uncomplicated country shadings. Well, there's a bit of psychedelicized echo towards the end, but I think you'll agree it was called for, as was the glockenspiel.

(By the way, as a resident I have to dispute this song's assertion that the devil spends a lot of time in Seattle. We never let him cross the 520.)