My Top 20 Albums of 2013: #6 William Tyler’s “Impossible Truth”
This is the music of careless dreams, that subtle softness of an imagined sun wafting the breeze along the pastoral paths. Much like with last year’s Buckethead tour de force, Electric Sea, William Tyler’s Impossible Truth is a true work of passionate beauty said without a single word. I make no secret of my love for the electric guitar and all the wonderful sounds it can make, because there is something about the instrument that is truly amazing, the way it can add so much color and life to notes, the way it’s forms are endless and mutable and it’s constructions so limited yet so unrestrained by how they can sound. Impossible Truth is not surprising for how beautiful it makes the electric guitar sound, but rather, how different it sounds than other instrumental records. I would describe a typical guitar instrumental as having a seeming narrative arc to it, a seeming attempt to encapsulate a story through the structure of the songs. But William Tyler’s songs have this ambling quality to them, as if they’re just [assing idle thoughts on your way down a road somewhere in the country. Passages repeat for much of the breadth of a given song, moving in and out of different picked notes, always maintaining this consistent pace and jaunty stroll to them, slowly adding in layers of other instruments to accompany them. The opening track alone, “Country of Illusion,” is a sprawling nine minutes in length, seeing the inclusion of pedal steel and horns added to its mix before finally terminating in a subtle and percussive downstroke to end the track. It’s an odd experience to take with music, as much of my own understanding of music comes from formula, but these are songs that don’t build to any sort of climax, instead fully painting scenes within the mind. Each time a passage repeats we become more aware of a different aspect of it, wiser to how the strings are interplaying within moments. It becomes meditative almost, as you begin to allow your mind to drift into a panorama of scenery that could encompass such a sound. I would describe it as being akin to looking at paintings and tracing all the different aspects within, as each song is teeming with ideas that can be endlessly thought about, why a transition happened here, how the timbre of the guitar changed there, etc. etc.. It becomes its own layer of majesty to simply drift along with it and see it as the soundtrack to an existence far apart from our own, finding the moments when we can see the humanity through the bounce of the six steel strings.
This leads to a rather natural inclination for the music to feel rather emotional without ever being blatantly infused with the trappings of emotion. As I’ve said, most songs feel like a journey along a path rather than a climb up a mountain, so the encapsulation of emotion within each song is not about the wild swing and whimsical direction emotions can take, but rather the steadfastness of it until we can see the truth of it. “The Last Residents of Westfall” possesses an ominous title, but is among the brightest sounding tracks on the record, causing my shoulders to bounce in time with it, though it slowly loses and picks up speed at intermittent times with a subtle hint of winds coming in the background. It is a track that glows brightly, making you feel the happiness of moving on in life, finding something new while always treasuring those things in the past. The track has a little turbulence about midway through, as the lines become more stilted and bass comes more into the mix, but it never feels abrupt of catastrophic, as if there is a hint of doubt beneath all that resolve. “A Portrait of Sarah” is made of jumbled acoustic strings vibrating freely in the air, the fingers of Tyler barely seeming able to keep up with what this vivid picture is in his mind. You can sense that intense longing in it, that need to say these things over and over again so they’re close to our hearts and therefore, as true as they can be. The track opens up eventually, feeling more confident, but never so confident as to lose that shy trepidation that comes from adoration But the beauty of this is that anyone could hear the same songs I hear and feel something entirely different from them. Tyler puts a lot of effort and concentration into making his guitar sound different in each song, giving us only hints through the timbre that things have changed and it becomes up to us to find the place where his subtle and graceful playing meets the intersection with our own lives.
It’s certainly not Joe Satriani or Steve Vai, that’s for sure, but the lack of technical virtuosity results in William Tyler creating a layered record where every change, every new layer and subtle difference seems to be the most important thing in the world. These are the sounds of our hearts as we become absorbed in a singular moment of beauty in the world, so engrossed and cut off from the rest of reality, yet so enamored to be a part of it.
Is It Guitar Pornography?: Does it have any choice but to be? Don’t come in expecting a technical display and you will be very satisfied.
Favorite Track: The Geography of Nowhere
