* PREORDER * SIMON JOYNER - Tough Love 2LP

* PREORDER * expected for release date of 22nd May (should be here by Record Store Day 18th April, we'll ask Simon if we can hand 'em over...)

Limited stock available.

Highly recommended - Album of the Year 2026 contender! Yes, we have heard it maybe a dozen times... Simon returned from his tour here inspired and on fire.

One of the marvels of Joyner’s catalog is how his patterns don’t repeat but transform. Knowing nods to Cohen, Dylan, and V.U. have been part of his songwriting since the early lo-fi days, but the ways these touchstones get infused keep changing. Rock songs split the difference between minimal grooves learned from Loaded-era Velvet Underground and the ecstatic rhythmic weirdness of Can. By the time we arrive at the penultimate track, “Anniversary Song,” the ghost vocals and scratches of microtonal synth have blurred the lines between Joyner’s folk singer heart and his avant-garde spirit.

All of this leads to the 20-minute title track which closes Tough Love, an eviscerating plunge into a seemingly bottomless pit of regret, survivor’s guilt, and unvarnished grief. Borrowing a repetitious structure from Lou Reed’s narrated suite, “Street Hassle,” and combined with the full-side testimonial of Dylan’s “Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” Joyner narrates from the perspective of his departed son speaking to his father and laying out his every failure and brutally highlighting how none of it can be undone. Soon, though, this agony opens up into something transcendent, in both its elegant imagery and ethereal atmospherics. The final moments of the album grant permission for self-forgiveness and hopefully someday, understanding.

Much as Joyner has approached songcraft from obtuse angles that change every time he picks up the guitar to make a new album, his relationship with grief and everyday struggle and the eternal reach for something brighter changes on Tough Love as well. Again, the meaning deepens, breathing in transformation with every strum, every unexpected observation, and every weighty sigh.