Walker equips the deity with that most humble of implements, another contrast of the mundane and profound. Shiva is an ascetic Hindu god known as “The Destroyer,” but also as a prodigious creator with world-transforming powers. Who else writes like this? Perversely, Fable’s last song is its catchiest-“Shiva with Dustpan,” a gorgeous orchestral folk tune and a testament to strings arranger and cellist Douglas Jenkins’s delicate touch. I don’t have any big revelations or answers.”Īnother promising new direction emerges on the weird epic “Pond Scum Ocean.” MacKay’s electric guitar skitters in strange directions and in odd modes, then shifts into trance-inducing chimes hinting at both The Twilight Zone theme and John Berberian’s Middle Eastern Rock. It’s all sort of non sequitur, stream-of-consciousness crazy talk. “I write couplets in a journal and stitch them together. “I’m not a good storyteller,” Walker said in an interview this year. The mantra “Hold on to the loose ends” chanted as a freaky wah-wah guitar exults to the fadeout ranks as a harrowing highlight. It appears to chronicle a drug-induced breakdown, but lines such as “A lenticular slap/To the cross-eyed seeker/The bridge written off the map/News crawl from a goddamn tweaker” don’t telegraph it. Sounding like an homage to the big-vocabulary rock of Slovenly, SST Records’ unsung ’80s heroes, the track writhes with rhythmic switchbacks, unexpected acoustic flourishes, and eccentric vocal phrasing. “A Lenticular Slap” exemplifies Walker’s sloshed-on-words approach.
None of the lyrics on Fable lands as bluntly as “I’d rather be dead than to see you cry” from Primrose Green’s “Sweet Satisfaction.” Rather, idiosyncratic details abound and veiled meanings reign. He obliquely poeticizes around his subjects, speaking in riddles as esoteric as they are memorable. These are undoubtedly the album’s most straightforward lyrics.Įlsewhere, it’s clear that Walker has developed into a writer who turns the mundane into the profound. The refrain, “I am wise/I am so fried/Rang dizzy inside/Fuck me, I’m alive,” points to Walker’s amazement at reversing his downward spiral. “We’re all lot lizards parked outside your door,” Walker sings, later concluding, “Always shit-brained when I’m pissed.” Longtime fans may wonder, how did we get to this pomp? But “Rang Dizzy” floats things back to Earth with cello-augmented baroque ’n’ roll. The song soon downshifts into a dulcet burble of folk-rock with an earnest, Sebadoh-esque melodic contour that later splays out into surging proggy climaxes. On opening track “Striking Down Your Big Premiere,” though, you may gasp at the outrageously bold intro that leads into a motif of Keith Emersonian grandiosity, bolstered by rococo, fiery guitar riffing from Bill MacKay. He got happy, but, mercifully, not sappy. After a failed suicide attempt in 2019, Walker sought help through meds, therapy, sobriety, and he saved himself. As he admitted in an interview conducted in early April, he’d been sabotaging himself for years, saying that “redemption, joy, and gratitude” inform Course in Fable. Produced by Tortoise’s John McEntire (who also contributed synth and keyboards), Course in Fable is Walker’s most ambitious and satisfying solo album to date.Īnother factor in Walker’s artistic resurgence has been resolving his substance abuse problems. Course in Fable exists somewhere new, yet again, as if the freedom afforded by releasing music on his own Husky Pants label has spurred him to always be creating on the frontier. Just this February, he released Deep Fried Grandeur*-*an improvised live set that’s like a kosmische ramble cut with Japanese psychedelic explorers Kikagaku Moyo. In one hemisphere resides a full-album reinterpretation of Dave Matthews Band’s The Lillywhite Sessions that the New York-based guitarist covered with unerring reverence and sincerity in another, he is a living historian cum poet of bathrooms.
There is always some undiscovered land in Ryley Walker’s vast world. The singer-guitarist takes a new, rangy, proggy direction with an artful touch, finding some psychedelic wisdom between the profound and the mundane.
Ryley Walker “Course In Fable” 2021 US Indie Folk Rock
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