Joyner's latest release, Hotel Lives, continues the tradition. Picking up thematically where 1999's Lousy Dance left off, the album features a cast of closeted skeletons, estranged friends, rainy days, lost loves, drunkards and memories of outgrown personas. And though the album lacks a standout as strong as Lousy Dance's title track, Hotel Lives is an infinitely deeper journey. It features an extensive cast of multi-instrumentalists who provide layers of atmosphere and create a strange canvas by utilizing plaintive strings, underground country riffs, the clanging of distant bells and all the eerie sounds you'd expect to hear in a haunted attic. Hotel Lives is like a rock that's been sitting in the forest getting rained on -- a rock with no roll. If you run your fingers across its surface, you'll find a soft coating of moss. That moss is Simon Joyner, and if you sit there long enough, he just might just grow on you.