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Événement
Ryley Walker + Wild Pink
RYLEY WALKER
Its a good record. But I cant really listen to it anymore. It kind of broke my brain. It took a year, and there were a lot of times I thought it was going nowhere, a lot of botched sessions. It was all my fault, no one elses. I was just totally unprepared. I went in with over-confidence, I went in there like Yeah, Im ready to go! but I was just kind of bullshitting. I went in expecting to make a fucking masterpiece, but I kept hitting a brick wall.
I was under a lot of stress because I was trying to make an anti-folk record and I was having trouble doing it. I wanted to make something deep-fried and more me-sounding. I didnt want to be jammy acoustic guy anymore. I just wanted to make something weird and far-out that came from the heart finally. I was always trying to make something like this I guess, trying to catch up with my imagination. And I think I succeeded in that way its got some weird instrumentation on there, and some surreal far-out words.
And its more Chicago-y sounding. Chicago sounds like a train constantly coming towards you but never arriving. Thats the sound I hear, all the time, ringing in my ears. Everybody heres always hustling. Everybody who talks to you on the streets always got something theyre coming at you with. Its the sound of strangers dodging one another. And landlords knocking on doors to get rent that people dont have. But its eerily quiet at night. This record is the sound of walking home late at night through Chicago in the middle of winter and being half- creeped out, scared someones going to punch you in the back of the head, and half in the most tranquil state youve been in all day, enjoying the quiet and this faint wind, and buses going by on all-night routes. Thats the sound to tune in to. Thats the sound of Chicago to me.
Chicago. More than ever Im just finding little details about it that I love. Theres so many weird twists about it: the way that street lights look here is really peculiar, and a really bleak sense when you walk around. It looks gray, theres not a lot of color, and I find a lot of radiance in that. And oh man it smells like diesel. And garbage cans. And in the summer when it really heats up its extra garbage-canny. And everything here looks like its about to break. It looks like its derelict. But thats what Im used to, thats what I like. The amount of imperfection in this city is really perfect.
So Ive fallen in love with Chicago pretty hard over the past year, despite crippling depression. Ive realized I cant not be in a city. I appreciate nature, I appreciate driving through nature, but you put me in a campsite for more than two days and Ill flip the fuck out. I need to hear people outside of my window trying to buy crack. I need to be able to buy a taco at two in the morning. I need to hear the neighbors yelling really fucking loud at each other in the middle of the night. I need people. I need people really fucking bad.
You have to find calm in the city. You actively search for it. Its not a la carte like it is in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. Which are beautiful, theyre one of Gods finest creations Im not talking shit about the Rocky Mountains. But in the city its like scoring drugs, youve got
to score your tranquil situations. And thats the sound of Chicago to me.
The songs dont really deal with any political or personal or social issues at all. Mostly it just comes from being bummed out. And theres not a lot of musical influences on the record. I wasnt even listening to music when I made it. Last year was probably the least Ive listened to music in my adult life. I mean I was listening to stuff in the van I listened to a lot of Genesis records. I got really into Genesis. But theres nothing else I could point to. Maybe Id say its a record for coming up or coming down. Its not an album for the middle of the day. Its for the beginning or end of it.
I quit drugs and booze recently. I got sick of being a party animal I dont want to be 19-gin- and-tonics-Ryley anymore. My brain is working a little better now, but man I was just going at it pretty wildly, and then trying to make a record while I was drinking, it was kind of like torture.
We all had no idea what was going on, every song wed be like What is this record? Because every song sounded different. In a way this record was working with everybody that Ive worked with for years, and it wasnt like a Fleetwood Mac thing where everybody fell in love and divorced or anything, but a lot of times we were butting heads in the studio.
I hadnt played any of the songs live ever, whereas with my earlier records Id play the shit out of them live and then go into the studio when they were totally cooked up and ready to go. But these songs were all half ideas and riffs I had on my mind, so that held things up for a while.
Being meticulous and being deets-oriented is not my thing at all. Ive never been like that. Im kind of like go go go! Making a quick record is not hard, its the easiest thing the world, so working in this time frame, over a year, made me go kind of nuts and... oh, tortured artist bullshit, blah blah blah. But then last summer we started playing songs back to back and finally we started to hear a common thread running through the record.
Im lucky enough to have some people who are playing on it who had a big part in shaping the songs and writing with me. Cooper Crain, the guy who engineered it, and played all the synthesizers. And when the flute guy, Nate Lepine came in, that was really something that made it special. The producer was this guy LeRoy Bach. I love LeRoy, hes a really talented guy. He did the last record too.
The last record was cool but I was still figuring out what I was good at. But Im fucking 28 years old, Ive got to figure out a sound, figure out something that I enjoy doing. So this record is a little bit more grown up. OlRyleys just workin on bein a better Ryley.
I think more than anything the thing to take away from this record is that I appreciate what improv and jamming and that outlook on music has done for me, but I wanted rigid structure for these songs. I dont want to expand upon them live. Theres a looseness to some of the songs I guess, but I didnt want to rely on just hanging out on one note. Its so straight-forward that I can see a lot of people really not liking it to be honest. But Im so happy, Im happy that its completely different and unexpected.
But I know its divisive. Its hard to talk about. Its a weird record.
WILD PINK
Wild Pink songwriter John Ross sings about lakes, hills and trees; moss, thickets and canopies; smoke, snow and wind. The impressionistic cover art of the bands eponymous debut full-length (2017) depicts a serene riverbed flush with dreamy hues of purple and green. It evokes a sense of tranquility that diametrically opposes their clamorous homebase of NYC, and the records mostly breezythough occasionally blusterysongset is equally uncharacteristic of the environment it was born of. Its not that their music perpetually idles, or thats its soft in a simplistic way. They just move at their own pace. A patient pace. A very deliberate pace thats, however unintentional, at odds with both their city and their position in rocks timeline.
On their brand new follow-up Yolk In The Fur, Wild Pink again take themselves and their listeners to a place of sonic placidity. Ross and his bandmates trade what sparing crunch they did use on Wild Pink for lush, balmy synths that lift their sound upwards and out, rather than forward and down. Any traces of slowcore and grunge are gone here, replaced by the angelic airiness of Cocteau Twins and Red House Painters, but with the modern crispness of LAKE or Japanese Breakfast. Sporadic splashes of electronic drums and emphasized basslines add fascinating new dimensions to their already-diverse palette, but no instrument or tone ever feels shoehorned in. Each part is stitched seamlessly into the other, and the bands aptitude for unexpected changeups is only heightened with the ability to shift from artificial to natural instrumentation.
Although its both the shortest and most straightforward cut in the tracklist, closer All Some Frenchmans Joke is a satisfying thematic knot for what Ross says is an album about protecting something vulnerable. Letting go of youth after the time is due/feels like relief/like when something stuck is freed, he sings. To call this album a maturation for Wild Pink is to not only recycle a long-frayed cliche, but to neglect the musical and lyrical wiseness they already possessed on their debut. But if Ross really did quell an existential crisis during the making of Yolk In The Fur, and managed to finally scrub the gunk clean, the fresh coat that grew back took form as one of the purest, fleeciest, most lavish rock albums of 2018.
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