Like the best abstracts the seemingly jarred elements are planned and structured to look haphazard, but without the forethought the juxtapositions would never land. Don’t let that imply that the record has an improvisational nature, far from it. As the album progresses, Walker pushes a notion of texture over melody and the album begins to color in like an abstract painting with dark, furious patches in one corner and gorgeous, light swipes on the opposite edge. As with the majority of Walker’s works on the album, though, the simple bliss is shot through with bent jazz markers and frustrated electric runs. There’s hardly a trace of folk proper on Deafman, though it perhaps shows up most prominently in Telluride Speed with its woven plucks and autumnal flute. He shirks once and for all the shadow of Primrose and leaves us with his darkest, most complex and delicately shaded album yet. With Deafman Glance Walker firmly asserts that genre is an exercise and not a defining characteristic of an artist. It was an unfair assessment met with some frustration by the artist, and rightfully so. That album’s follow-up, Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, was a looser bar-rock exploration that was summarily panned for not sounding enough like its predecessor, for not settling onto the throne. In the wake of Primrose Green Ryley Walker was lofted up as the heir to knotted folk’s throne, though it always seemed that he had no interest in resting there for any length of time. It’s not a straightforwardly happy ending, but it sends a hopeful message: Dig through the crates for long enough and you might discover yourself.The curse of making an album that’s hailed as great is that it haunts your career, rearing its head wherever you go, always an accolade and an albatross at the same time. “I woke up with intuition,” he affirms softly, his voice nearly overpowered by the music. “Spoil With the Rest” closes Deafman Glance by pairing Walker’s tale of confronting his limitations with a triumphant swirl of guitars. These moments add up to an album that feels equally thoughtful and spontaneous, restrained and unpredictable. The passages that stand out, like the warped soft-rock guitar solo in “Opposite Middle” and the skittering climax of “22 Days,” have the ephemeral quality of improvisation. Melodies and grooves expand in a way that was previously limited to Walker’s famously experimental live shows. The force driving these songs-from the exquisite slow burn of “Expired” to the instrumental guitar ramble “Rocks on Rainbow”-is an embrace of the unexpected. Deafman Glance marks the moment when his work actually has the power to alter the atmosphere around it. “My word is divine/I control the weather,” Walker once sang, with a hint of self-deprecation. This is a trick the album pulls off repeatedly, without losing its thrill. It’s not the first of Walker’s compositions to resemble a long stretch of quiet road, but it’s the first that takes you somewhere distinctly surprising. The multi-part “ Telluride Speed” is immediately striking, with Chicago jazz fixture Nate Lepine’s flute guiding the song through its dreamy verses, proggy breakdowns, and stomping, psychedelic coda. This adventurous spirit makes Deafman Glance a coherent mood piece and a confident expansion on 2016’s Golden Sings That Have Been Sung. Placed so early on the album, it’s a sign that Walker trusts his audience to follow him into unfamiliar territory. “Accomodations” is Walker’s most discomforting composition-a cacophony of bad-trip ambience and loopy imagery (“Nothing to eat/Only a pound of flesh”) that echo between caustic refrains. After gentle, hallucinogenic opener “In Castle Dome” and the dusky fusion of “22 Days,” the scenery collapses, the sky darkens, and shit gets weird. “I’m just making Ryley Walker records.”Īs so often happens when we leave our trusted guides, things quickly fall apart. “I’m not flipping through record bins anymore,” he recently declared. These shifts give the record a deeper emotional resonance than anything else he’s put his name to. And then there’s his singing: Once a competent and breezy instrument, Walker’s voice has evolved into a throaty speak-sing that sounds depleted, as though it’s been scooped out of itself.
His music is heavier and more complex than it used to be, the arrangements harsher and stranger. Walker’s lyrics previously served as a mere complement to his winding, pastoral fingerpicking, but now he writes closer to home, describing the familiar landscapes of Chicago and the self-destructive monotony of life on the road.
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