Review: Joshua Hyslop reaches a career-high with raw, vulnerable ‘Evergold’

Joshua Hyslop hangs his voice upon rustic and timeless melodies. That’s just his way. With Evergold, out now, the singer-songwriter turns in performances that are as enduring as they are elastic, almost breakable with a vulnerability that’s enough to shatter the heart. He tears the membrane of his own mind as a way to cultivate a collection that’s a career peak. It doesn’t get much better than these 10 songs that feel like long-lost tapes newly uncovered in a hidden vault. They bound beyond the present and into a catacomb of cherished works.

In crystalline moments, from “Overcome” to “The Way You Can,” Hyslop manages to capture the fragility of existence itself, as he yearns for those things he can’t quite grasp but linger in the air mere inches out of reach. “I’m afraid / I can’t sleep,” he whispers on “Hills,” another moment that knocks you off balance with emotional force. It’s centripetal, and his voice is the guiding light, casting the audience like a whirling dervish into the universe.

“If the golden days should come, I’ll see you down the line,” he heaves in the pivotal line embedded in “Down the Line,” pricked with guitar and little else. He sings in hushed tones that tickle the senses and get the emotions running on high. He weaves in and out of the production, rinsing his hands in the passage of time and the longing he harbors for long-forgotten memories that now disappear in his rearview mirror. Rosy-cheeked and somber, he sculpts these moments with a sort of heart-torn weariness that you simply can’t teach. His wisdom is intoxicating, served upon a shimmering lyrical platter of which many would envy to partake.

Joshua Hyslop navigates the world wielding a scalpel, its edge glistening and perfectly thin and sharp. Evergold arrives as a statement piece about living and learning to survive. He makes you feel with every single syllable, as though his life depends on it. And maybe it does. Art, after all, is a startling reflection of self in its most agonizingly intimate state. “Hold just like that / Fall to pieces beneath the weight of it all,” he observes with “Pieces,” a moment of ethereal beauty and texture.

When the finale few moments roll in “Supposed to Say,” you get the sense you’ve just witnessed an artist’s magnum opus. Evergold is fearsome and relentless. You’d be hard-pressed not to feel something rattling in your soul. It’s that good.

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