Walker has always been a charismatic figure, whose work has mostly been defined by its multitudinous influences. Walker is 26, and already has a strong catalogue of releases behind him: Primrose Green and its folkier 2014 predecessor, All Kinds Of You probing instrumental duo records with Daniel Bachman, Bill Mackay and Charles Rumback a rewarding hinterland of juvenilia, experimentation and live downloads. This is the basic plot of Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, the wonderful, self-deprecating new album from this most productive and compelling of artists. Some way into the beatific odyssey of “Age Old Tale” he would urge, “Go on, take my advice brother/Skip out on the bill, and piss on the rest.” The halfwit in Ryley Walker would rise, triumphant, to the surface of his songs. Many evenings would begin with no money many others would climax at 4.30, as the speed is kicking in. Nights would be long, drink taken, and vainglorious boasts – “I can take any motherfucker home who loves me” – casually made. But the unpredictability of Walker would be apparent in the text of every song. Contrarily, this new music would be more composed and less jammed than before: on “A Choir Apart”, orchestrated flurries would answer his proclamation, “I control the weather”. The bucolic troubadour pose would be trashed in favour of songs with titles like “The Halfwit In Me”, and his quicksilver musical energies channelled into a sound that moved beyond the touchstones of Buckley, Jansch and John Martyn. How, then, to resolve these two distinct Ryley Walkers? As Primrose Green gathered momentum and acclaim last summer, and he and his band zigzagged across the Atlantic, Walker evidently stumbled upon a kind of reconciliation.
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