![]() ![]() JTR, meanwhile, is given a five-minute coda of skronking sax and post-rock envelope-pushing worthy of Jim O’Rourke. Whereas the DMB’s Sweet Up and Down was a pleasant if unremarkable slice of lightly jazzy soft rock, Walker performs an instrumental version with saxophone thrust centre stage. Throughout, he brings a more expansive touch to the solid, blue-collar jamming of the originals. Walker considers the album such a guilty pleasure that it warranted a radical reworking. What sets Chicago singer-songwriter Ryley Walker’s reappraisal of Dave Matthews Band’s The Lillywhite Sessions apart is that the original songs, – atypically downbeat, and recorded in 2000, were never formally released, although they were leaked online soon afterwards, and many ultimately appeared in re-recorded form on 2002’s Busted Stuff. Ryley Walker, 'Summer Dress' (Live) OPB Octo Watch the psychedelic-folk guitarist play an extended version of 'Summer Dress,' recorded live at the 2015 Pickathon festival. ![]() ![]() Soundboard + Schoeps MK5c (onstage, XY)>KC5>CMC6>Sound Devices MixPre6>24/48 polyWAV>Adobe Audition CC>Izotope Ozone 5>Audacity 2.3.T here’s a history of albums being covered in their entirety, from Laibach’s martial reinterpretation of the Beatles’ Let It Be to Ryan Adams taking on Taylor Swift’s 1989 (and losing). Yet here he is: a generous spirit, one for whom, on this particular day, I was especially grateful.ĭownload the complete set from its page on the Live Music Archive. The instrumental backing is dense and chaotic in Summer Dress, where his passionate. The late 2010s don’t feel like a moment for generous spirits, but you don’t choose when you’re born, anymore than you choose to whom, or where. A guide to Riley Walker: biography, discography, reviews, ratings. They’re who and what he is - honest to the point of ache, always pushing to be something more. That Walker puts his conflicts out there for everyone to see is not a flaw, nor is one choice he makes more true or “real” than another. This set (a duo of Walker and Jewell) encapsulated all of the different sides of Ryley Walker at once - from his best-known song (and total live jammer) “The Roundabout” to the not-often-played-anymore “Summer Dress,” to the ending jam, which hews closer to his most recent Union Pool shows - and also kills. It’s sharing those darkest places in yourself, but it’s also playing a huge fan’s birthday party at Trans-Pecos in the middle of the day, even though you’ve got another show in town that Tuesday (which ends up being a jaw-dropping improv set with Jewell, David Grubbs, and C. That very first song lacerated me I believed the voice I heard. The song is especially vivid for me because it’s the first one I ever heard Ryley Walker play. Even a whimsical-sounding tune like “Summer Dress,” if you listen to his delivery, is more anxious than it seems: for a person with a belly full of wine singing about green pastures of desire, the narrator sounds ill at ease. Listen to his lyrics as sung, and you might be surprised: Most of Walker’s songs are varying degrees of melancholic. Anyone who has caught Ryley live or read him in Vice or reads his Twitter knows that he is certainly the former: he can be very, very funny. There’s a well-known paradox of the “sad clown” - that people who are funny are often people who aren’t happy. I get it: A lot of us want to be more than our headline. It was released in March 2015 under Dead Oceans Records. Whether displaying his loyalty to his muse’s roots, or gnashing his teeth at the right to snub traditions (or again, to attempt at creating new ones), Ryley Walker’s talents are enormous. Do you want to be the guy who wears British tailoring in leafy photo shoots, or do you want to be the guy who uses his trio show with Ryan Jewell and Steve Gunn to play 50 minutes of psych jams? Walker is both of those things - he’s good at being both of those things - but one gets the sense that he isn’t totally comfortable living solely as either. Primrose Green is the second studio album by American musician Ryley Walker. ![]() Maybe that’s part of it, but I see a contest of impulses - to be a commercially approachable troubadour or the more esoteric, improvisational player he’s been since his career began. When Walker takes a fairly straightforward folk-rock album track and turns it into a live 15-minute jazz-psych freakout, I don’t think the change is just about the “freedom” of the live setting or a fundamental dislike of the album track. Ryley Walker’s music has always embodied a certain conflict. Honesty often means getting close to the dark places inside you. The music in the world that is great is also the music in which the artist is most honest with her/himself. Making music is an act of generosity - the sharing of your inner self with a public that may or may not appreciate or understand it. ![]()
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