If you have not yet heard of Ty Walker and the Humanoids, now is the time to pay attention. Far out in the void, beyond everything we humans know and love, there lies The Moosh: a luminous deity who controls the nine universes within the multiverse, each one stretching from its sparkling center like a wide-reaching tentacle of a squid. One such tentacle, the sixth to be exact, has begun to decay. It is in this atrophied limb that we find our planet, a speck of life within a declining universe plagued by ‘fractured frequencies’ and want for a sonic remedy called the ‘galactic twang’. Herein lies the origin of Ty Walker and The Humanoids, a band that has made it its mission to save us all, and they’re going to do it with a little thing called country music.
Ty Walker first began writing songs as a young man growing up in Roscoe, Montana. He was a staple of the Southern Montana scene, crooning tunes that circled his uneasy past: an ostracized astrophysicist father who left him at a tender age without explanation. The mystery of this estrangement plagued Ty via the array of remnants his father left in his attic: strange writings about multiple universes, mollusk-ian entities who controlled worlds, reptoid alien races, and other seemingly ludicrous ideas. The riddles of these letters soon became accompanied by unexplained visions of another world that mystified Ty and further displaced him from his post on Earth. Thus, on a fateful day in 1972 when a routine post-breakfast cigarette behind the Grizzly Cafe turned into an alien abduction, Ty Walker found himself on a path that led him to a new home, his calling finally realized. He was to front an extra-terrestrial country band, and he was to save the world.
Though Ty is the principal songwriter and front person of the group, the title of band leader must also be shared with Glarzak, a native to the planet Glarphonia, home of the extra-terrestrial species The Humanoids. Glarzak was first tasked with repairing the sixth universe by the divine priestess Zeob, conduit for The Moosh itself. Glarzak’s extensive research took the Humanoid to earth, where he was struck by country music. It was after this realization that he went on to form the Humanoids to try to create it himself. The road was anything but smooth for the group, who soon found that they lacked a singular quality found only in true country singers. Thus, Ty Walker was abducted to front the project. It took some time for the Humanoids to master the foreign art of country music, and the band spent hours upon hours honing their craft in “The Holosphere,” a practice space upon their spaceship. The fruit of this labor is their album Home on the Strange, an alien yet undeniably familiar journey through Ty Walker’s bizarre existence as a galactic country-crusader, a simple man thrown into a role to which he was fated.
Home on the Strange benefits from the unparalleled creativity of an alien species getting their musical legs the first time. Though the Humanoids believe they are playing humanesque country music, their sound tips into art rock, soul, sampledelia, swamp, and psychedelic rock among a myriad of other genres. The soundscape crafted by the Humanoids is spacious, unpredictable, tinged with samples from outer space and eccentric arrangements, with familiar instruments like pedal steel and electric guitar taking on shimmery, interstellar hues. For a group bound together by such an important mission, Ty Walker and the Humanoids is humorous, joyful, their songs infectious in their lack of ego. While Ty makes references to Glarphnoia, the sixth arm, and other words entirely unfamiliar to us earthlings, the record remains tied to its human center. At the end of the day, Ty Walker is just a man trying to understand his past while navigating his ever-expanding universe.
Today Glide is excited to offer an exclusive premiere of the standout track “Never Odd or Even,” which finds Ty Walker lyrically tackling his past through a fever dream. The song finds the band fusing their interstellar country with flavors of psychedelic-indie-funk-rock Here Walker’s bizarre childhood dreams of flying vacuum cleaners and careening arrows blend together with the subject of his father’s writings: black holes, other universes, strange things that Walker could only assume were dreams themselves. Reminiscent of acts the Flaming Lips, the Budos Band, and Beck, the song carries a bouncy flow to it that is contrasted with nice touches of twangy guitar and harmonica. Just as Ty Walker became unable to clearly understand the lines between the real and the imagined, so too does the song become a kaleidoscope of imagery and sound, keys and synths weaving in between Walker’s nonchalant vocals, memories and dreams overlapping and somehow creating a cohesive picture of his origins: delightfully absurd and yet somehow making perfect sense.
Quote from Ty Walker describes the inspiration behind the tune:
I’ve had dreams that stand out far more than others—so vivid they feel as real as any other memory. Sometimes, as I go about my day, a flashback of a dream enters my mind, and I’m unsure if it’s a dream or a waking memory. Because my waking life has turned out so strange—traveling the multiverse with a group of extraterrestrials (and playing in a country band with them, of all things)—dream and reality have just melted down into a bizarre blob of existence, and as far as I can tell they’re on the same plane.
LISTEN:
