Ryley Walker is playing MOTR Pub on March 2nd in support of his new album, Primrose Green, out 3/31 on Dead Oceans.
Ryley Walker is the reincarnation of the True American Guitar Player. Raised on the banks of the ol' Rock River in northern Illinois, Ryley's early life doesn't give us much more than Midwestern mundanity to speak of. Things start to pick up in 2007, when he moves to Chicago and storms the local noise scene with his Jasmine-brand electric guitar, and a few years of wasted finger-bleeding basement shows firmly established his name locally. By 2011, at age 21, Ryley's music offered impressive displays of fingerpicking prowess and it was a 2012 bike accident that set Ryley on his current path. Practice became more diligent. He began lacquering his fingertips at cheap salons. Ryley was finding a new path refracting the British traditional spectrum, from Bert Jansch to Nick Drake, and defying all the limitations of the genre. His 2013 recordings — "The West Wind" EP and All Kinds of You LP – fully express these Anglophilic tendencies to the point of nearly exhausting their possibilities. This brings us to the present. Primrose Green begins near where All Kinds of You leaves off but quickly pushes far afield. The title sounds pastoral and quaint, but the titular green has dark hallucinogenic qualities, as does much of the LP.
Ryley Walker
MOTR Pub
Monday, March 2nd
10p
FREE
