I got one lash for the thought, one lash for the scene, and one lash to make sure I never came back to Franklin, Tennessee.” We know what’s coming up of course we do. In Franklin, Tennessee, you don’t speak unless spoken at. “When I was a young girl my tongue was painted black. Take “Franklin, TN”-a searing version of the traditional coming-back-for-revenge tune. But what it sounds like is something entirely new. “Jackie Lynn” is a concept album, a collection of interrelated songs that form a narrative, in the classic country story-song tradition. We’re figuring out pretty quickly that Jackie Lynn’s spiritual ancestors are more likely to include Anthony and the Johnsons than Shania Twain. Partners in crime, lovers for all time, alien love.” Thematically there’s some C&W in there, but it manages to skew both darker and more ecstatic. You say that you don’t mind the snow blind. And like a white city dove, I’ll know skyscraper love.” Later, in “Alien Love,” the character sings, “You’re on your way from Mexico you say, where the weather don’t suit you so you’re moving away. “I’m going to take to the streets, and find strength in all that’s weak. “Bright Lights,” the opener, is the most accessible song on the album, with a classic country yearning for someplace else-only for Jackie Lynn, it’s the urban jungle that beckons, not the green, green grass of home. Fohr may have invented a new genre here call it Country Goth.
#Ryley walker new album full#
Jackie Lynn is a fictional construct, Fohr’s attempt to create a country-western avatar (there’s even a full bio on the Thrill Jockey Records website) but the character’s red-glitter cowboy hat is from a costume shop, she wears an industrial gas mask and her songs feature more synth than twang. The female baritone singer-songwriter, whose “Circuit des Yeux” project is a great example of Chicago art rock, here takes on an entirely new persona. With “Golden Sings,” we learn more about who Ryley Walker is with “Jackie Lynn,” we learn more about who Haley Fohr can be. “Golden Sings That Have Been Sung” is available through the usual channels, as well as the Dead Oceans Records website. Jude / Again and again.” As these crystalline words spin out, the song itself rises to a glorious transcendence. But it’s a thrillingly sustained lyric achievement: “There’s no instance / In conscience or convenience / Even though you stand on heavy shoulders / I take the roundabout / ‘cause I like to see St. “The Roundabout” is straight-ahead folk of the venerable talking-singing variety, absolutely choked with words given its four-and-a-half-minute length. (There’s even a bit of proto-acid soloing over deck effects after the second bridge.) On the blistering climax, Walker sings, “Seventeen past three, and I’m waiting on a friend / He owes me cigarettes, and I owe him gasoline / Half past four, and the speed is kicking in / Honey, come on over and I’ll show you where I begin.” Take “Sullen Mind,” a kind of homage to classic-era folk-rock that recalls The Byrds and Van Morrison. It’s a collection of gorgeous folk-rock songs that I’d recommend on purely musical merits alone, but Walker’s lyrics put it clear over the top. This bravura versifying sets the tone for the rest of the album. “A tuneless trumpet / Breaks down the stone / Weight of the keep and take / Contracted by loan / And the halfwit in me stayed out all night.” The lyrics (when you can hear them the album’s mix sometimes swallows them up, alas) are staggeringly good. But “Primrose Green” was already flawless in my review in these pages, I called it “one of those shimmeringly perfect folk-rock tunes that only comes along every dozen years,” so it’s pushing your luck to try to go back to the same well just a year later.īut on repeated listenings, “The Halfwit In Me” takes on a different quality to “Primrose Green,” and surprisingly it’s a poetic one. Its opener, “The Halfwit In Me,” is a little too similar to the lead tune on his last album, “Primrose Green” it’s another rolling ballad with a liquid guitar and no bridge-just repetitions of the verse, which gives the song an undulating, hypnotic quality. On first hearing, Chicago folk-rocker Ryley Walker’s new album, “Golden Sings That Have Been Sung,” doesn’t kick off very auspiciously.
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