Many of the songs here cleave to a lean, rhythmically brisk attach that frequently reminds me of the Sea and Cake, and in particular Walker's mentholated vocals often recall the sleek cool of Sam Prekop. He's joined by frequent rhythm section members, bassist Andrew Scott Young and drummer Ryan Jewell, as well as saxophonist Nick Mazzarella-percussionist Quin Kirchner, vibist Rick Embach, and producer John Hughes, adding synthesizer and vocals, all contribute additional layers.
The music was made with a stripped-down quartet, with the leader as sole guitarist. If you didn't know what inspired it, it wouldn't matter. part of the pop zeitgeist." Knowing Walker, that last phrase sounds like one of his excellent tweaks, but who knows? Last month Matthews posted on Facebook: "The first time I heard Ryley's cover of the Lilywhite Sessions, I was in a record store. Everyone who played on the record grew up in the suburbs and were big Daveheads. In November Walker told Billboard, "I made this record for Dave fans. Walker and Matthews have met and have publically formed a mutual admiration society. Walker released his best album yet in 2018 with Deafman Glance, so I wasn't anticipating a follow-up just months later, because even though he didn't write the material, his fingerprints are all over the music-it sure doesn't sound like a lark to me.
RYLEY WALKER JAM ON CRACK
On the other hand, earlier this year Walker made a quickie album as Crazy Bread with Good Willsmith keyboardist Max Allison called Vocoder Divorce (Astral Spirits) which sure sounds like a jam band take on experimental music to me, containing the sort of shapeless noodling that Walker has vigorously eschewed when he leads his own crack band. Although it pains me a bit, there's certainly a chance that Cimarusti is correct that Walker is "riding the Dave train." Still, I'd prefer to see this as a brilliant piss take.
I mean, why would I? And after listening to Walker's version repeatedly in recent months I have no doubt that the original would be vastly inferior because Matthews is an annoying, soulless singer and his band possesses the grit of Jell-o. The piece focused on the recent release of Walker's unexpected album The Lillywhite Sessions (Dead Oceans), a back-to-front reimagining of a spiked but heavily bootlegged recording the Dave Matthews Band made with producer Steve Lillywhite during 1999-2000. A couple of weeks ago one of my former colleagues at the Chicago Reader wrote a concert preview of Ryley Walker in which he celebrated the fact that post-Grateful Dead music was no longer anathema to "punks and freaks." The writer, Luca Cimarusti, focused on the social stigma of digging that music, and while there has unquestionably been an element of smugness in dismissing jam band music, he completely bypasses the most obvious reason that shit has long been frowned upon-musically, it sucks.
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