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“The Roundabout” is straight-ahead folk of the venerable talking-singing variety, absolutely choked with words given its four-and-a-half-minute length. (There’s even a bit of proto-acid soloing over deck effects after the second bridge.) On the blistering climax, Walker sings, “Seventeen past three, and I’m waiting on a friend / He owes me cigarettes, and I owe him gasoline / Half past four, and the speed is kicking in / Honey, come on over and I’ll show you where I begin.” Take “Sullen Mind,” a kind of homage to classic-era folk-rock that recalls The Byrds and Van Morrison. It’s a collection of gorgeous folk-rock songs that I’d recommend on purely musical merits alone, but Walker’s lyrics put it clear over the top. This bravura versifying sets the tone for the rest of the album. “A tuneless trumpet / Breaks down the stone / Weight of the keep and take / Contracted by loan / And the halfwit in me stayed out all night.” The lyrics (when you can hear them the album’s mix sometimes swallows them up, alas) are staggeringly good. But “Primrose Green” was already flawless in my review in these pages, I called it “one of those shimmeringly perfect folk-rock tunes that only comes along every dozen years,” so it’s pushing your luck to try to go back to the same well just a year later.īut on repeated listenings, “The Halfwit In Me” takes on a different quality to “Primrose Green,” and surprisingly it’s a poetic one. Its opener, “The Halfwit In Me,” is a little too similar to the lead tune on his last album, “Primrose Green” it’s another rolling ballad with a liquid guitar and no bridge-just repetitions of the verse, which gives the song an undulating, hypnotic quality.
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On first hearing, Chicago folk-rocker Ryley Walker’s new album, “Golden Sings That Have Been Sung,” doesn’t kick off very auspiciously.