Zephyr Lounge,Leamington Spa
Chicagos feted singer-songwriter combines shiver-inducing musical intensity with onstage wisecracksMusic very regularly throws up mavericks. Not that many singer-songwriters are fairly as contradictory, however, or as 27-year-old Ryley Walker,who is just about to release his accomplished third solo album, Golden Sings That absorb Been Sung.
Increasingly feted as the jazz-math-folk troubadour of the moment (yes, and there are other exemplars giving Walker a elope for his money in the cosmic Americana niche stakes),Walker combines shiver-inducing musical intensity with the goofiness of the class stoner-clown. When he puts his seemingly boneless, fluid fingers to his 12-string acoustic and shuts his eyes tight – as he does at the start of the multi-bar raga that prefaces the new song silly Thing She Said – he is a picture of transported musicianship.
The racket coming off the stage belies the over-polite tang of the jazz-folk tag Walker acquired with his final albumContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com