To help put together these various puzzle pieces, Ryley assembled a band made up of several longtime collaborators. (And speaking of weird, Ryley says that in addition to Genesis, much of the album’s inspiration comes from “Australian extreme scooter riders on YouTube and balding gear heads on Craigslist.” Go figure.) Like Walker’s beloved Genesis, the pop element is never too far from the surface even when shit gets weird. Melodies open drift in unexpected directions but remain downright hummable.
Tricky time signatures abound but feel as natural as can be. Wiry guitars melt into gorgeous string sections (arranged by Douglas Jenkins of the Portland Cello Project). But no matter how complex it gets, the album is never overwhelmingly busy.
#RYLEY WALKER YOUTUBE FULL#
Course In Fable’s songs are twisty, labyrinthine things, stuffed full of ideas (Walker half-jokingly calls it his “prog record”).
The result is a rich, immersive affair - a headphones record if ever there was one. “I told him to take the mixes and have at it,” Walker says. But McEntire was also intimately involved with Course In Fable’s overall creative process. On the seven songs here, he delivers the signature shimmering and pristine sonics he’s become known for over the years. Seeing his name in an album’s liners is pretty much a trademark of quality.Īnother Windy City exile, McEntire is based on the west coast these days, working out of the Portland, OR studio he’s dubbed Soma West. John McEntire, Course In Fable’s producer/engineer/ mixer, can rightly be called a legend for his work with Tortoise, Stereolab, The Red Krayola, Jim O’Rourke, and countless others over a prolific career that now spans more than three decades. Last October, Ryley went straight to one of the primary architects of the Chicago sound to make the LP. To put it simply: Course In Fable is Walker’s best record yet, full of active imagination and endless possibilities.
Even though he emerged at first in folk-rock troubadour mode, it makes sense that he’s arrived at this point each LP has grown more intricate and assured, his influences distilling into something original and unusual. Walker spent his formative years in Chicago, absorbing those heady sounds and finding ways to make them his own. The masterful Course In Fable, the songwriter’s fifth solo effort, draws from the deep well of that city’s fertile 1990s scene, when bands like Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, and Gastr del Sol were reshaping the underground, mixing and matching indie rock, jazz, prog and beyond. But his latest LP is a Chicago record in spirit. Ryley Walker currently resides in New York City.
0 kommentar(er)
