Ryley Walker - Deafman Glance

Quixotic chamber folk jazz from Chicago’s questing six-stringer.

- Jon Dale

FOR a number of years now – ever since 2015’s Primrose Green, really, a fluid, languid daze of an album, a drifting jazz-folk odyssey – people have been waiting for Chicago singer-songwriter Ryley Walker to make the one, the album that would capture his spirit and essence, that would mark him out as one of the greats among his peers – and of his times. It’s something that Walker seems a little uncomfortable with, particularly given his tendency to torch, or at least actively disown, the music of his recent past. In 2016, for example, in an online interview around the release of Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, he pretty much crossed a line through his early guitar soli and folk-song years: “It wasn’t my strong suit. I did that for a few years, and I was like, ‘Goddammit. Why am I doing this? It’s not me.’”