![]() No one knows what the future holds for young Ryley Walker. The album title sounds pastoral and quaint, but the titular green has dark hallucinogenic qualities, as does much of the LP. The band on Primrose Green is a mixture of new and old Chicago talent, blending both jaded veterans of the post-rock and jazz mini-circuits together with a few eager, open-eared youths. It’s hard not to recall John Martyn’s early 1970s work, though session musician Ben Boye’s piano work is particularly revelatory here. These are big shoes, to be sure, but Walker seems more than up to the task.Last month, Ryley Walker announced his Dead Oceans’ debut, Primrose Green (out March 31st), and shared the excellent title track, “Primrose Green,” Today, he’s back with another of the many Primrose Green standouts, “Sweet Satisfaction,” which presents some of his most intricate and ecstatic fingerpicking. Far from mere pastiche, Primrose Green deftly secures a place within the ranks of its most direct influences, proving Walker as heir apparent to the Buckley/Jansch/Drake/Morrison mantle. Building exponentially on the promise of his earlier work, Walker’s sophomore album shows an artist finding confidence in a sprawling exploration of more song-based ‘60s British folk rock traditions. “The High Road” especially carries echoes of Nick Drake’s “Cello Song” and finds Walker returning to more familiar environs, albeit with greater confidence and stronger arrangements.Ī declarative, assured statement, Primrose Green is a massive step forward both musically and artistically. Closer in tenor to the latter, Walker possesses more of the former’s earthbound sense of form and melody. With the incorporation of jazz elements into his compositions (see “Summer Dress” and “Same Minds” in particular), comparisons to Drake and Buckley abound. While in sharp contrast stylistically, they feel very much of a whole and in keeping with Walker’s new sense of aural aesthetics. While the former finds Walker nearly growling the song’s “ I’d rather be dead” chorus, the latter relies more on a swift recitation of the lyrics against a decidedly British folk-inspired melody. The sprawling “Sweet Satisfaction,” in particular, turns into a manic, fuzzed out psych-folk freak-out, while “Love Can Be Cruel” builds to the mirror image of the latter’s frenzy, drawing to a more subdued conclusion. RYLEY WALKER SWEET SATISFACTION FULLWhere that album largely featured subdued acoustic folk, Primrose Green is full of lush, urgent pastoral folk songs shot through with jazz underpinnings, often exploding with reckless abandon. Amplifying his arrangements and infusing each with an unrelenting urgency, Walker shows dramatic growth as an artist over his last release, 2014’s All Kinds of You. Throughout, the music on Primrose Green has a meditative quality, hypnotically spiraling through extended instrumental passages and showcasing Walker’s vocals, now inhabiting a space somewhere between Morrison’s wordless grunts and Jansch’s utilitarian drawl. Lacking Morrison’s interpretive nuance, Walker’s approach here, while certainly reminiscent of Astral Weeks and the like, is more akin to that of Jansch and, back stateside, Tim Buckley’s mystical folk jazz. With an air of mysticism and elements of jazz creeping into his playing, Van Morrison comparisons, while certainly apt, will feel a bit too on the nose and slightly ill-fitting. Primrose Green, Walker’s latest and first for Dead Oceans, finds him having fully embraced the work of the aforementioned Jansch (with and without Pentangle), Nick Drake, Van Morrison and a host of others. Taking cues from Jansch, his playing and singing began to move away from American influences and more into the equally rich tradition of British folk guitarists. His fingers nimbly exploring the fretboard, Walker quickly found favor within a new generation of solo acoustic performers, many of whom gravitated to the Tompkins Square label and Takoma sound.īut unlike those who operated strictly within the solo instrumental realm and found inspiration in celebrated American guitars, Walker showed flashes of a performer looking to create something slightly less insular and more song-based. Proving himself a deft acoustic guitarist, his initial recordings for Tompkins Square recalled the sounds of folk icons Bert Jansch, John Fahey and those who found a home on Fahey’s Takoma label in the late ‘60s. As a performer, Ryley Walker has worn his influences on his sleeves. ![]()
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