[rating=8.00]
Ryley Walker is not ashamed of the bevy of influences who inform his sound. Primrose Green – his third solo album – finds the folksy singer/songwriter fully embracing the weight of those heavy hitters on his own sound, right down to the early 70s Van Morrison cover art. The success of the album is due in no small part to the breadth of styles that the young songwriter has heard and that are so clearly at the back of his mind – the Fender Rhodes of Joni Mitchell’s Miles of Aisles; the medieval guitar interplay of Pentangle’s Bert Jansch and John Renbourn; Chicago’s noise and jazz scenes. Walker finds a way not only to call on these diverse influences to write songs, but brings them together to create something entirely new and unique.
Shimmery guitars, vibrating electric keyboards and snappy drums throughout the album provide the perfect platform for Walker’s dynamic vocals, and the audio fidelity of each track is absolutely rich. The title track launches into a swirling, acoustic whirlwind that delivers its listener directly into the musical world that Ryley Walker’s lyricism inhabits. In the heavy, undulating bass line, there is a capacity for the song to spill over and erupt in a fiery jam, but this is an album that intends to take its time and is unafraid to put the inverted jangle of acoustic guitar chords front and center.
Folk-jazz figures heavily into the songs of Primrose Green. While the “Summer Dress” continues in the same vein of Astral Weeks-era Morrison, “Same Minds” brings to mind the playing of Jansch and Renbourn. The instrumental “Griffiths Bucks Blues” similarly demands these comparisons; Walker’s acoustic playing is excellent, with percussive thuds and elegant flourishes throughout. The beautiful “On The Banks of The Old Kishwaukee” calls to mind the pastoral, bucolic setting of its title and stands as one of the folky highlights of the album.
The subtle use of electric guitars to provide a creeping, sometimes unsettling undercurrent – rather than in the context of flashy instrumental leads – is unique and refreshing. “Sweet Satisfaction” feels like the flip-side to “Primrose Green,” utilizing many of the same dynamics and the same mysterious suggestiveness of the title track, but through a darker prism, with a heavier atmosphere. “Hide in the Roses” is an airy reprieve, with its melancholy lyricism and pretty, meditative fingerpicking that provides a perfect close to the song cycle.
What separates Ryley Walker from other young artists who are similarly calling on their retro influences with their writing is the fine balance he strikes in synthesizing his music. Indeed, balance is a central theme to this album, and Primrose Green finds Walker with a sure footing: paying respect to his forebears while looking ahead to the future. In writing an album that wonderfully touches on so many styles, it similarly appeals on so many levels – folk, jazz, classic-rock types – that can be appreciated in listen after listen.
