MUSIC

Sharrock for the mellow sound of troubled singersongwriters such as the Tims Hardin and Buckley. On his 2015 solo full-length Primrose Green, a fuller, more autumnal aesthetic entered the picture, familiar to fans of UK acts such as Pentangle and Accolade (and even Van “Grumpy Old COVID Denier” Morrison) that combined elements of prog, folk, and jazz. With 2016’s Golden Sings That Have Been Sung , Walker shared his love of the dry, angular pop abstraction practiced in the 90s by the likes of Gastr del Sol and Tortoise, and for the new Course in Fable he enlisted Tortoise’s John McEntire to engineer, mix, and produce.

To the ears of this longtime fan, Course in Fable is the album Walker has been leading up to his whole life. His current progressive-rock obsessions, among them Genesis and Gentle Giant, have already illustrated how to throw in everything but the kitchen sink, and here Walker channels all his past influences into a singular voice. His conversational, John Martyn-esque vocal delivery has grown into something unique, especially when he couples wry, self-deprecating observations with sweetly sung melodies (“Rang Dizzy” includes the lines “Fuck me, I’m alive” and “I sat on the lawn wondering ‘Should I dose again?,’” while on “Striking Down Your Big Premiere” he remarks, “Always shit brained when I’m pissed”). Walker recently marked two years of sobriety, and throughout Course in Fable, he’s clearly on a redemptive journey through the darkest and most drug-damaged parts of his psyche, both lyrically and musically. Complex, dizzying arrangements unfold from the first moments of opener “Striking Down Your Big Premiere,” and things break down into utter cacophony at one point on “Axis Bent.” Still, this is no obtuse, inaccessible concept album for music-school nerds; the impossibly sugary chamber-pop hooks of “Shiva with Dustpan” and “Rang Dizzy,” which recall the cough-syrupy, darkly tuneful heights of Big Star’s Third or John Parker Compton’s underappreciated Appaloosa , have been stuck in my head for days. Released on Walker’s own Husky Pants label, the album features several longtime collaborators, including badass stand- up bassist Andrew Scott Young, godly guitar picker Bill MacKay, and in-demand session drummer Ryan Jewell. But while Course in Fable maintains a warm nostalgic glow, it also looks toward the future. I can’t wait to see where Walker goes next—even if he tries fusing techno with Krautrock and tropicalia, I’m in. —STEVE

KRAKOW

Sunny War, Simple Syrup Hen House sunnywar.bandcamp.com/album/simple-syrup

Nashville-born, Los Angeles-based singersongwriter Sunny War is known for her clawhammer fingerstyle guitar playing, her vivid autobiographical lyrics, and her distinctive sound, which starts at the crossroads of blues, country, folk, and punk, and only expands from there. She le home as a teenager to busk on Venice Beach and in San Francisco with friends she met in local punk scenes, and since then she’s battled homelessness, substance abuse, and domestic violence. After releasing a couple albums on her own in the mid-2010s, she stepped into the national limelight with 2018’s With the Sun, released by LA-based label Hen House Studios—that January, Rolling Stone named her one of “10 New Country Artists You Need to Know.” These days War is firmly entrenched in Los Angeles, and her latest album, Simple Syrup, follows a busy period when she launched a downtown chapter of Food Not Bombs, participated in Black Lives Matter protests, and released a couple EPs and a few singles (including “Amen,” a gospel- and funk-driven collaboration with fellow songwriter Chris Pierce under the name War & Pierce). War recorded Simple Syrup at Hen House Studios, working with producer and longtime collaborator Harlan Steinberger, who owns the studio and its label. Her soft guitar and hushed vocals lead the way as she blurs the lines between styles, and though the album’s songs easily flow together, each one is memorable in its own right; opener “Lucid Lucy” lands like a sweet lullaby, “Losing Hand” has a charming old-timey feel, and “A Love So True” rhapsodizes about romance over a hypnotic, soulful groove. War wrote most of the material before the pandemic, but on the jazztinged “It’s Name Is Fear,” she speaks directly to the anxious, lonesome, or regretful feelings that preoccupied so many of us during lockdown: “The life we knew, it came and went / Ready or not, the change is here,” she sings. Despite its foreboding mood, the song overflows with the power and resilience we’ll need to live our post-pandemic lives to the fullest.

—JAMIE LUDWIG

writhing

Squares, Chart for The Solution

Trouble in Mind thewrithingsquares.bandcamp.com/ album/chart-for-the-solution

Many rock ’n’ roll duos deal with economy of one sort or another. In the case of Philadelphia group Writhing Squares, it’s not a matter of compensating for thin arrangements: woodwind player Kevin Nickles and electric bassist and rhythm programmer Daniel Provenzano both sing and play synthesizers as well, and they can make so much noise on their own that there’s rarely room or need for other musicians. The overblown sax and ultracoarse fuzz of “Geisterwaltz,” from the new double album Chart for the Solution , sound as big and mean as the Funhouse-era Stooges might have if they’d been willing to tackle 3/4 time. Chart for the Solution is littered with references to a rock ’n’ roll canon that’s long on pugnacious attitude: Dick Dale, Suicide, Neu!, Roxy Music. But Writhing Squares also make canny use of textural contrasts—such as the succinct, airy flute solo that bisects the butt-rocking “The Abyss Is Never Brighter”—to make their punches land even harder. On previous releases, the band sometimes lost their way when they stretched out, but on Chart for the Solution the opposite is true; three songs last between eight and 18 minutes, and the pacing of each epic keeps you hanging on to see just what’ll happen next. —BILL

MEYER v