Amid the dazzling mastery on show, Course In Fable features perhaps the most personal lyricism of Walker’s career to date, yet he’s endlessly self-deprecating, any glimpse of pretentiousness punctured quickly with humour or a sharp jab in his own direction. Walker’s touring partners Andrew Scott Young (bass, piano) and Ryan Jewell (drums) bring a sophisticated jazzy proficiency to everything here, allowing the two guitarists’ patterns to dance around each other in mesmeric fashion. A dizzying jazz-math riff and a pair of interweaving arpeggios, latterly given a splash of slapback delay, are complemented by some wildly extravagant soloing. From the first moments of opener Striking Down Your Big Premiere, Walker and MacKay are engaged in a deep, instinctive conversation.
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The desire to spread his wings signposted on Golden Sings That Have Been Sung (2016) and 2018’s Deafman Glance is taken to its full conclusion on a record of breathtaking complexity. Instead, the avant-garde and improv flavours of Chicago’s 1990s underground are the main reference point – alongside Walker’s love of prog, although not, he’s quick to point out, of the “finding a magical mushroom on a mountain surrounded by dragons” variety. The seven tracks have little in common with the John Martyn and Nick Drake inspired Anglophile folk of his most successful album, 2015’s Primrose Green. Joined again by long-time conspirator Bill MacKay, Walker plays almost entirely electrics, leaving behind his cherished Guild D-35 and deploying a G&L Broadcaster and 12-string Rickenbacker 360. Inspired by the guitarist’s love of Genesis, the playing is complex, multi-layered and staggeringly accomplished, the tunings weirder than ever. Recorded in just three days at Hallowed Hall Studios in Portland, Oregon with multi-instrumentalist John McEntire, admired by Walker for his work with Tortoise and Gastr del Sol, this is a self-confessed “prog album”.
Either way, it’s true, he’s never sounded more vital, unburdened and less in thrall to the acoustic fingerstyle heroes of the past than on Course In Fable. Or maybe it’s the Chicago guitarist counting his blessings. The accompanying profanity suggests surprise he’s still with us, having lived an ‘eventful’ life to date.
“I’m alive,” exclaims Ryley Walker on Rang Dizzy, the second track on his fifth solo album.
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