RYLEY WALKER BILL MACKAY FREE

RYLEY WALKER BILL MACKAY FREE

Dizzying prog-drenched song structures (this is where everyone mentions Walker’s love for Genesis) holding hands with post rock parables butt up against languid folk noodles and free jazz-inspired squeal. With all that said, Course In Fable is a musical labyrinth. It was like re-meeting myself all over again.” Circumstances and experiences are never the same for anyone, but this line from that interview gets at something I’ve been thinking about a lot in the past year: “There’s a lot of happiness in the music now, there’s more personality. I don’t talk about the mental health shitshow I found myself in 7-ish years ago, but it was gnarly and took a lot of years and a lot of therapy to get to the place I am now. I don’t know him at all, but reading that Guardian interview resonated hard. Where Course In Fable strikes deepest is in the lamentations and realizations around the journey and in the celebration that you don’t need to swim in the darkness to thrive.ĭuring the press circuit for this record, Walker’s vulnerability is a bullhorn. I tried to pretend for a while that I wasn’t, but when whatever it is flows through your veins, you can only keep it at bay for so long. Somewhere inside the inimitable Ryler Walker’s latest, everything clicks and Course In Fable becomes not just a celebration of so much that I love about music and how it can make people feel, but a monument to the path it takes to get here.

Ryley walker bill mackay