I mean, my career’s very stagnant, but I could never speak an ill word about Steve, who’s a very dear friend of mine. You both are vying for the top “sensitive guitar wizard” in indie rock slot, and I think it would help your careers to gin up a little conflict. But the main thrust of my piece is to instigate a rivalry between you and Steve Gunn. I love your new record and I have a bunch of questions about it. But around the time of 2016’s Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, Walker discovered his own wry voice, sticking to his lower register and leaning into the sleepy, somewhat sluggish parts of his personality. On earlier records like 2015’s Primrose Green, he sometimes sounded eerily similar to the cultish ’60s jazz-folk star Tim Buckley, projecting his tired tenor over waves of fluttery acoustic guitars. (Walker likens his music to “simple man’s progressive rock.”)īased on his songs, it would be easy to slot Walker in the “sad bastard singer-songwriter” lane. I’ve just asked whether the tendency of journalists to always mention his hilarious Twitter feed has somehow overshadowed his music, which started out as retro-leaning psychedelic folk and has since evolved (on his excellent new album Deafman Glance) into a kind of morning-after, cigarettes-and-coffee music that’s also surprisingly limber, veering from Walker’s tired purr of a voice to jazzy guitar interpolations that blossom unexpectedly. The Rockford native and current Chicagoan is navigating the interstate somewhere in Illinois while engaging in an amiably meandering interview that occasionally touches on his own music. Walker has checked in from the road, though he’s not far from home at the moment, he says.
#Ryley walker deafman glance free#
The fucking character Ryley lucked it out and fucking gets to play gigs, have beer, and get free hummus backstage on a rider.” But the real Ryley should be smoking a fucking carton of Pall Mall Reds, while getting government stipends. “The music and the Twitter is definitely another character, a self-deprecating character. “You know, even when I’m touring there’s some sort of character ,” he says later, near the end of a 40-minute conversation. Fortunately, kinder gods have smiled on him.
He’s joking but he’s also serious - if he weren’t a musician who’s become indie-famous for being a wise ass online, the 29-year-old guitarist truly believes he would be stuck in minimum-wage purgatory, praying to porcelain gods for deliverance. “That’s way better than the guy who washes dishes and snorts meth off a toilet seat, you know?” “I guess I have become branded as the guy who has a funny Twitter and also makes music,” Ryley Walker tells me. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year.
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