William Tyler continues to plumb the complexities of the American identity on ‘Goes West’, perhaps his most subtly hopeful release to date
Kyle Crockett
January 25, 2018
The last time I heard something I felt like I deeply needed to hear, it was the Go-Betweens’ painfully beautiful break-up album, 16 Lovers Lane. Grant McLennan and Robert Forster’s lyrics and perfect musical arrangements paint a more complete picture of love and loss than I have heard on any other pop music release. I remember turning it on for the first time those years ago, at that point at least a year removed from my own heartbreak and still wildly uncertain about the things going on inside me—not to mention how they were manifesting. The Go-Betweens opened my heart’s latch and I hung on each syllable, feeling all of my emotions unfurl before me in real time. It was an intoxication, an exorcism, an awakening, a frenzied release, amplified by the resounding awareness that I was engaging with something that I was always supposed to encounter. The world seemed to have chosen this moment and this music only for me, and when it presented the thing, I latched onto it with obsessive commitment.
How can a wordless album accomplish essentially the same thing?
William Tyler has operated within the mystery of this question for some time now. 2019’s Goes West is the guitarist’s fourth studio release since 2010 and his third with the titans of Merge, and it arrives as a deeply rich, beautifully subdued culmination of the musician’s decade-long contemplative American odyssey. From his debut Behold the Spirit to now, Tyler has offered a complex arc that works to define many of the characteristics of this place and its modern identity; there is an exhilarating freshness everywhere, but behind it is a thick melancholy, an intense longing to identify and protect the beauty of this world from its own shortcomings. He ruminates on this identity through instrumental arrangements driven by shimmering guitars, fingerpicked and thumb-droned to carve out, somehow, one of the most unique voices in modern American music without offering a single word.
Since embarking on his solo career, Tyler has committed himself to holding a mirror up to the face of his neighbors, no matter how far removed from him they are. He understands the interconnectedness of this century and the wild promise it offers. He communicates his faith in that promise through the traditions that have followed its evolution, arming his lush musical style with the structural cornerstones of country and blues, the inescapable progress of work and struggle, the encompassing essence of hope in the ones next to him, and a relentless belief in the one within.
Goes West makes good on this decade of promise. His first record with a full band behind him is surprisingly perhaps Tyler’s quietest release. This song cycle finds the composer engaging deeply with the subtleties of both his medium and his subject. Like much of Ry Cooder’s poetic guitar work, Goes West elaborates on those subtleties with beautiful mastery, a tone poem that whispers its worth into the listener’s ear as if to say, things will be better, look at all the good you and I have already done, listen to it growing, taking the place of dark things whenever it can, search for it every moment you can.
I listened to Goes West before I did anything else today. I drove to work and bathed in the gift of knowing, once again, that the world had chosen a new moment only for me. Wordlessly, William Tyle told me a universe of things that I needed to hear this morning. In “Fail Safe,” a rich guitar flourish opens up to a highway and succumbs to the abandon, the childish wanderdrunk that accompanies the road to a faraway destination. “Call Me When I’m Breathing Again” plays just like sadness that you can’t name, the kind you can only feel and know deeply, the kind that never leaves but only becomes more manageable. The stunning “Rebecca,” very possibly my favorite track of Tyler’s, is a universe of suggestion. Sparse pianos chime like hints of warmth amid frozen memories; Tyler’s guitar plays a melody kindled by longing and accentuated by its own resolve to love, despite things.
William Tyler’s music is one of this century’s greatest treasures. For Americans young and old, his music should come to you as a beacon of genuineness, and a shield against its opposite. Tyler has never been one to force himself on his neighbors; his music quietly knocks at the door, knocks that seem to tell you themselves that a friend is calling. Accept his wordless invitation, open your ears, and enter into one of the most meaningful conversations you can have through modern popular music.
Jeff Tweedy’s debut set of original solo material reminds all of us of what’s gotten him here, and a lot of what’s gotten us here too
Kyle Crockett
December 6, 2018
For me, it was Being There. It wasn’t the first Wilco record I’d heard and it still might not be my end-all favorite, although sometimes it damn sure is. I was a sophomore in high school headed north in a hulking breaking church bus—the crimson-stain’d letters were peeling tiredly away from the van’s yellow white sheen—on a straight shot to Memphis, riding shotgun, crushing on a girl in my 5-person youth group who sat a row or two behind, and listening to our driver’s music selection. I’d turned over the reins only moments before, begrudgingly. But we were talking about Wilco because Wilco (the Album) was coming out and I was a new fan who acted like he’d listened to more than he had. So he put his favorite Wilco record into the CD player.
The screeching discord of Being There’s first minute groped at my bones and I heard for the first time what was happening in the chaos of my aching inside, manifested here on the stereo, for everyone. (Now, before you say anything, get over it. We’re all aching this much, all the time, about something.) Seconds later, a simple piano and a man named Jeff Tweedy painted my thinking and feeling heart every color.
The six and a half minutes of “Misunderstood” were my first introduction proper to the most important band and songwriter of my life. In those lines of loss, wandering, anger at the world for not getting it, condemnation of the self for taking too long to figure it out, rage at the dead ends of never figuring it out the right way, and finally thanking everyone for none of it, I felt a universe. I felt my universe. We drove on to Memphis and listened to every minute of that double album.
Tweedy has had this effect on me ever since that bus ride. Each time I listen to his music I can sense some semblance of this original feeling. It’s the feeling of knowing completely that another person sees you, which is confounding. A musician has no right to see us and we have no right to see them, much less are either of us ever even realistically able to. But the great ones do see us. Like Van Morrison’s heartbreaking Astral Weeks, there’s an empathy to Tweedy’s musical worldview—it creates a feeling like he’s actually with you, dealing just like you are. He’s been doing this with his music for thirty-five years now. It’s been true since the Uncle Tupelo numbers.
Thirty-five years removed, Jeff Tweedy has finally released a first set of original songs under his own name.
On 2018’s WARM, Jeff Tweedy seems keenly aware of his effect on people and of his place within American musical and social culture. He addresses this immediately on “Bombs Above” which makes this awareness seem more like a new, slightly unexpected struggle for Tweedy rather than an unwelcome but long-foreseen outcome. It’s a terrific burden to bear, and Tweedy spends much of his time on WARM exploring what it means to have contributed a body of work that has deeply affected the musical perspectives and emotional palates of thousands for multiple decades, while also devoting space to the effects that relationship has had on him personally. Only one track after “Bombs Above,” he delivers “Some Birds,” a devastatingly guilty condemnation of himself as a prod rather than a salve to the masses’ suffering. Tweedy even finds his own form of redemption in this strange metacognitive realm—on “From
Far Away,” the singer contemplates his own hypothetical death and upon it he humbly asks us, his fellow dealers, to take everything from him.
It’s a total comfort to hear this songwriter’s first love letter to his friends, family, and massive worldwide audience with only his name on it. It feels like it’s taken him all this time to figure out exactly what to say, to us and to himself. “When a sunny day turns to rain, think of me,” he soothes on “I Know What It’s Like.” He’s told us this before, over and over again. On and on and on, Wilco will love you baby, because Wilco hurts the same as you and we need each other to get through all this shit. It’s not that Tweedy’s musical career has been the only one to commit to this duality of thrilling personal coping mechanism and unflinching listener support system; it’s just that there aren’t many musicians out there who can accomplish the feat with such sweet, heartbreaking sincerity as to confess to all of us that he actually means it. And we feel better because we know he does. For years now, I’ve known exactly where to go when I haven’t known how I could possibly proceed. Wilcoping has stitched and restitched my feeling fabric for a decade, and there are thousands who’ve experienced this for three times that long.
WARM feels somehow like an arrival for Jeff Tweedy, even though the first thing you may notice are his aged vocal cords. It reignites the classic question of when a song stops being a Jeff Tweedy song and starts becoming a Wilco song, since the ones here are so original, fully fledged, and by this point heroically familiar thanks to the timeless musical style of its creator. The pieces of Tweedy are all here, from haunting poetic nonsense that screams truth to the evolved nervy guitar solos that owe much to Neil Young’s fragmented genius, from how-did-he-do-that strumming techniques to how-was-that-so- obvious surprises of melodic bliss. A Wilco fan can almost hear the parts of the other members, which is probably aided by Glenn Kotche’s eternally perfect percussion. And by record’s end, like all of the things in life that demand our thoughts and feelings’ attention, or like a house from some past moment that was so comfortable it hugged you, we want to return to it. We recognize the value not only in moving forward, but in knowing that to do that the right way, we must see the value in the world around us as it is right now, no matter if that’s the best or the worst place we could be.
I’d like to thank you, Jeff Tweedy, for everything.
On ‘Fudge Sandwich’, Ty Segall reveals a complex, reverent understanding of his idols through the lens of his own relentless spirit
Kyle Crockett
October 29, 2018
2018 began with a particularly gleeful iteration of Ty Segall’s typically unhinged bang. His Freedom Band that emerged with 2017’s eponymous release found their footing on Freedom’s Goblin, unleashing over an hour of Segall’s indelible brand of garage rock, elevated always by his sacrosanct commitment to glam, fuzz, and power pop in the midst of his evil space psychedelia. Goblin reasserted Segall’s place among the West Coast ranks, reminding everyone of the kind of fully formed composer he has become.
But the show stopper on Goblin wasn’t a Segall song.
When I looked at the track listing and saw “Every 1’s a Winner,” there was no question what was coming. I could hear the riff, I could see the leather and polyester combos, I could taste the Hot Chocolate. When track 3 rolled around, sure enough, Segall unloaded perhaps the best cover song he’s recorded in a career that is chock full of them.
Segall has always had an attachment to the cover song, and he’s always treated the endeavor with a greater urgency than many of his peers, be they contemporaries or influences that are years gone. He holds a special reverence for each song he chooses to arrange, and he channels it through a relentless amalgam of pure fun and pure devotion to the style and attitude of the song’s origin, often drawing out a full portrait of his heroes while reimagining their identities, allowing them to play anew in a universe all Segall’s own. In this way, Segall offers his listeners a unique answer to the question of his musical influences and tastes.
Fudge Sandwich appears in the blink of an eye and somehow before what was supposed to be his fourth full-length album in 2018. Ty has dived fully into his sandbox of musical portraiture to deliver a lightning bolt of purely fun rock and roll, and a gleaming love letter to his diverse idols. The stunning rendition of John Lennon’s “Isolation” flies thanks to an eerily on-point vocal performance that practically reincarnates the Beatle, while Segall’s trademark glam and fuzz explodes the ballad into a relentless freakout. He somehow recreates the unhinged guitar and vocal tones of Amon Düül II on highlight “Archangel Thunderbird,” ripping and howling amidst typically funkified Freedom Band percussion. On the album closer, Segall captures every ounce of the heartbreak and longing of Sparks’ near-perfect “Slowboat” to remind everyone just how special the rocker is at balladic arrangement.
Elsewhere, it’s Segall's deranged explosion of his source material that achieves these tracks’ transcendence. Ty growls out War’s “Low Rider” like some cursed thing atop a pit of synths that swirls and screams. Neil Young’s “The Loner” and Dead’s classic “St. Stephen” both get almost complete retreatments, shoved through a meat grinder of punk and freak out and unleashed as euphoric exercises in heavy. In one of the record’s softest moments, Segall casts The Dils’ frantic “Class War” in an entirely different light. Segall delivers a top-shelf LA power pop gem with a majorly satisfying Segallian solo to boot.
Fudge Sandwich arrived out of nowhere, but it feels like one of Segall's’ most natural installments. The psych master has paid respects to his musical heroes throughout his career with consistently impressive covers, and a whole album of them is just a peach of a thing for Segall fans. He somehow manages to make an album of novelties stand all the way up as a record of real value, delivering a truly inspired celebration of his predecessors and a first-rate rock record at once.
