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William Tyler grew up in the Nashville song machine. In 1982, when the guitarist was a toddler, his parents co-wrote the hit single “Bobbie Sue” for veteran country group The Oak Ridge Boys. His father also wrote LeAnn Rimes’s 1997 hit “The Light in Your Eyes”. Its folksy message about staying positive amid life’s setbacks was originally penned by Tyler Sr as advice to his son.
The younger Tyler has since established himself as a notable musician in his own right. He found his feet on the other side of the musical tracks, playing guitar in Nashville alt-country band Lambchop and cult indie act Silver Jews. His solo albums are instrumental affairs rooted in Americana but with a prodigal range of reference. The psychedelic folk-rock of 2013’s Impossible Truth was inspired by the twinned Californian impulses towards utopia and apocalypse. His 2016 breakthrough Modern Country combined fingerpicked acoustic guitar with the synthesiser tones of 1970s cosmic music.
Time Indefinite is named after a film by autobiographical documentary maker Ross McElwee. Tyler’s guitar-playing is plainer than usual. It is embedded in computerised textures and loops, like a ghost in the machine. The album’s off-kilter but immersive sound follows Tyler’s collaboration with electronic musician Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, on a 2023 double single. It also results from a mid-life sense of crisis and last chances, the dawning understanding that time is not actually indefinite.
“Cabin Six” opens with abrasively clattering beats, like a close-up of helicopter rotor blades, which give way to eerie keyboards and the desolate sound of wind blowing across an empty land. Tyler’s fingerpicking is not apparent until the next track, “Concern”, in which an attractively simple guitar melody cycles through a smeary electronic soundscape. “Electric Lake” shimmers like a mirage while a staticky, echoing voice delivers the indecipherable message of a strange dream. “Star of Hope” has samples of wordless choral vocalisations and slow-motion hymnal guitar, as if grasping through a fog for the reassuringly solid world of “The Light in Your Eyes”, the song that Tyler’s father wrote for him when he was a child.
★★★★☆
‘Time Indefinite’ is released by Psychic Hotline
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