“Primrose Green” is a colloquial term for a heady cocktail of whiskey and morning glory seeds that generates dark hallucinogenic dreams when imbibed and is more or less guaranteed to produce the mother of all hangovers the morning after.
Musically, the mind bending effects of such a beverage are more likely to lead to restless paranoia than calming restfulness. This is the very mood Ryley Walker taps into on his hugely impressive sophomore release.
The hazy psychedelic album cover has an Astral Weeks vibe and signals the fact that you need to journey into the past to source the main influences of his music.
His songs are rooted in traditional folk and evoke the spirit of eminent Brits like Anne Briggs and Bert Jansch while making deliberate forays into the experimental, outsider jazz Tim Buckley brought to the genre.
Born in Illinois and currently based in Chicago, Walker is a ragged looking drifter with prodigious fingerpicking skills and a predilection towards nudging pastoral folk from old to new weird territories.
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His band is a mixture of players drawn from post-rock and jazz mini-circuits who help to widen the sonic palette from acoustic virtuosity to abrasive psych-punk.
This range can be heard on a track like Sweet Satisfaction which begins with slurred John Martyn-esque vocals then morphs into a kick-ass electric jam.
On The Banks Of The Old Kishwaukee is another stand out track which shows the depth of the artist's song craft.
This may all be self consciously retro but should not be dismissed as a clever copycat exercise. At just 25, Walker already looks and sounds like the real deal and is a convincing reincarnation of his musical heroes.
Ryley Walker's website
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