Ryley Walker
Primrose Green

2015 marked, for yours truly, an important moment of crisis regarding musical exploration. After 15 years spent always eagerly searching for something that sparked interest, I found myself bogged down with dull and predictable listening experiences. It's probably my fault: little time and lack of attention do not help in understanding whether I'm simply listening to the wrong albums or if the overall quality level has indeed decreased. Furthermore, the limited range of genres I frequent (yes, I'm sorry but I've never been one of those record humanists who say "I listen to everything" to be clear) makes things worse. Just at the moment of maximum despair, ready to make drastic choices (stop writing/listening/buying records and dedicate myself to something else) in mid-March, 2015 decided to gift me an album worthy of a few words. It is "Primrose Green" by the young Illinois singer-songwriter Ryley Walker.

A young man who arrives at his second album in almost total anonymity, but I don't believe that will last long. Because "Primrose Green" is first and foremost a heartfelt homage to a certain folk singer-songwriter deeply infused with jazz and psychedelic aromas, an album and an author heavily indebted to both Nick Drake and Bert Jansch, and therefore to traditional British folk, and to the unguarded flights of Buckley senior, the nasal singing of John Martyn and above all, if a primary source of inspiration must be cited, I would say the "Astral Weeks" of Van Morrison.

Not exactly a series of authors and albums easy to compare oneself to, but the beautiful thing is that the young man manages to do it without blatantly copying any of the aforementioned. Probably thanks to quite a unique tone, but more importantly to a phenomenal backing band, made up of members of the old Chicago Jazz school, young budding folksters and a producer who is part of one of the best kraut psych combos of the moment, the Cave. The result is a mesmerizing coagulation of the cited influences, tossed between hard and pure fingerpicking and bluegrass ("Griffith Buck's Blues", "Hide In The Roses"), heartfelt tributes to orchestral Nick Drake ("The High Road"), quasi-traditional pieces that smell of Ry Cooder ("On The Banks Of The Old Kishwaukee"). But the best is reserved by our author when the entire band backs him up, it is there that the album takes off and manages to transport us to other dimensions.

From the title track, still earthy with the piano bolstering a formally ballad-like pace, it moves to the jazzy visions of the phenomenal "Summer Dress", a psychedelic jazz reinterpretation of the aforementioned Van Morrison. It continues with the double bass punctuating the stream of consciousness in "Same Minds" and the harmonium introducing the gentle pace of "All Kinds Of You". It ends in two maelstroms that encapsulate a bit of all the atmospheres and influences of the album: "Love Can Be Cruel" now acoustic, now electric, perpetually jazzy and psychedelic; "Sweet Satisfaction" which pushes even further, with a tail-end featuring fuzz guitar and pounding rhythm.

Probably the album of the year.