Ryley Walker

Course In Fable

With the totally triumphant Course In Fable, Walker has devised the ultimate two finger salute to anyone who has ever pinned him down as an artist chained to vintage inspirations: this exciting, moving, beautiful and complex album sounds only and exclusively like Ryley Walker music.

For all its deft homage, the elaborately rococo'd prog- folk of Course In Fable is still very much Walker's own trip.

Walker’s playing has the math-rock fidgetiness and twists of album producer/engineer John McEntire’s Tortoise, but this is an overtly poppy album.

It may not always be obvious where he’s going, but he vists some highly appealing places along the way.

An ensemble piece constructed with old-time friends, it taps into the improvisatory zest that imbues those early Tortoise or Gastr del Sol recordings with such unexpected electronicity.

Walker may tip his hat to Chicago's experimental underground or prog behemoths like Genesis, but with this release, he's very much his own man.

This record feels like Ryley Walker is coming out of the hangover of dependency and the sun shining on his face is warm and welcoming rather than a slap in the face. Sink into it.

In and out of the studio, Ryley Walker has been one of indie rock’s more colourful characters for a while now; 'Course in Fable' only reinforces that view.

For such a prolific, genre-blurring artist, we are lucky as listeners that all the pieces Ryley Walker’s set up over the past decade could coalesce in such a fine, tight 40 minutes.

The singer-guitarist takes a new, rangy, proggy direction with an artful touch, finding some psychedelic wisdom between the profound and the mundane.

Walker’s fifth solo effort is a perfectly imperfect package with significant potential and just enough expanse to keep things interesting.

Regardless of where it comes from, it’s a delight to listen to. Ryley Walker is free and dancing with his best self.

It’s like listening to a person who invites you over for a conversation, but whenever you try and dig into their motives, it just shushes you, hands you another piece of shortbread and tells you not to worry about it.