"Like you and me, Sturgill Simpson is someone just trying to figure it all out, who feels lost and unsure. Simpson’s second album, 'Metamodern Sounds in Country Music,' opens with a song alluding to a metaphor for how the only certain thing in existence is that there is a cause for everything, but tracking the original cause is impossible, and it only gets headier and deeper from there. 'Metamodern Sounds in Country Music' is an album as a series of questions: Why does it seem like the lot in life for some people is suffering? What’s the point of all of this? Is making art still valuable if you spend your time woodshedding to no one? Do you work because you love it, or are you on a conveyor belt you can’t see and can’t control? If the point of musical stardom is a never-ending ride on the road, is it even something worth pining for? It is that searching that makes 'Metamodern Sounds' so rewarding, so worthy of obsession. Like every classic album, it is like a Litmus test for how you’re feeling on each subsequent listen, each new spin revealing a new avenue of self-discovery or meaning."