Ryley Walker
Deafman Glance

This guy from Rockford, Illinois certainly has an extraordinary talent that he continues to develop more and more with each album. With the gain of a certain maturity (after all, he was born in 1989), he increasingly leans towards self-determination, forming his own personality, and developing his music in a less referential manner to his main sources of inspiration. Nevertheless, Ryley Walker is thankfully in no way similar to forms of revisionism of American folk music like Jonathan Wilson or Father John Misty, nor is he anything like a boy scout type such as Marcus Mumford. On the contrary, his collaborations with musicians like guitarist Daniel Bachman and Bill Mackay, and jazz musician Charles Rumback, specifically place him in a more sophisticated context and explain how, despite being a proponent of what is considered a kind of revivalism of classic folk music (as if this genre was ever abandoned), his roots are fundamentally derivative of jazz and experiences of American primitivism.

His devotion to a certain singer-songwriter style that straddles the late sixties and the early seventies, typical of Van Morrison, Nick Drake, and Tim Buckley, is thus revisited in light of the previous considerations in this latest album, "Deafman Glance" (Dead Oceans), also according to a certain "American" tradition whose echo is evident from the very first track "In Castle Dome." Like "Telluride Speed," it could very well be a song written by Bill Callahan, also because Ryley's voice is very reminiscent of the Maryland songwriter, who here somehow appears as a more or less unconscious constant reference. Special guitar arrangements follow one another in "22 Days," "Accomodations," "Opposite Middle," and the concluding "Spoil with the Rest," accompanied by that sophisticated yet never noisy or intrusive and almost tropical jazz, while tracks like "Can't Ask Why," "Expired," "Rocks On Rainbow," are distinguished by a more experimental approach to the instrument, structuring into almost minimalist compositions.

Probably Walker's sophisticated approach is something that might limit his appreciation among a wider audience that he certainly deserves, just as perhaps his singer-songwriter craft "deserves" to evolve into a more "concrete" form also on the content level. But this might just be my preference instead of a criticism to levy on an album that is indeed beautiful and presents no weak points. And for as much as it's "classic," it is certainly not negligible or "already heard."