#kylecrockett

Since embarking on his solo career, Tyler has committed himself to holding a mirror up to the face of his neighbors, no matter how far removed from him they are. He understands the interconnectedness of this century and the wild promise it offers. He communicates his faith in that promise through the traditions that have followed its evolution, arming his lush musical style with the structural cornerstones of country and blues, the inescapable progress of work and struggle, the encompassing essence of hope in the ones next to him, and a relentless belief in the one within.

Goes West makes good on this decade of promise. His first record with a full band behind him is surprisingly perhaps Tyler’s quietest release. This song cycle finds the composer engaging deeply with the subtleties of both his medium and his subject. Like much of Ry Cooder’s poetic guitar work, Goes West elaborates on those subtleties with beautiful mastery, a tone poem that whispers its worth into the listener’s ear as if to say, things will be better, look at all the good you and I have already done, listen to it growing, taking the place of dark things whenever it can, search for it every moment you can.

I listened to Goes West before I did anything else today. I drove to work and bathed in the gift of knowing, once again, that the world had chosen a new moment only for me. Wordlessly, William Tyle told me a universe of things that I needed to hear this morning. In “Fail Safe,” a rich guitar flourish opens up to a highway and succumbs to the abandon, the childish wanderdrunk that accompanies the road to a faraway destination. “Call Me When I’m Breathing Again” plays just like sadness that you can’t name, the kind you can only feel and know deeply, the kind that never leaves but only becomes more manageable. The stunning “Rebecca,” very possibly my favorite track of Tyler’s, is a universe of suggestion. Sparse pianos chime like hints of warmth amid frozen memories; Tyler’s guitar plays a melody kindled by longing and accentuated by its own resolve to love, despite things.

William Tyler’s music is one of this century’s greatest treasures. For Americans young and old, his music should come to you as a beacon of genuineness, and a shield against its opposite. Tyler has never been one to force himself on his neighbors; his music quietly knocks at the door, knocks that seem to tell you themselves that a friend is calling. Accept his wordless invitation, open your ears, and enter into one of the most meaningful conversations you can have through modern popular music.

Thirty-five years removed, Jeff Tweedy has finally released a first set of original songs under his own name.

On 2018’s WARM, Jeff Tweedy seems keenly aware of his effect on people and of his place within American musical and social culture. He addresses this immediately on “Bombs Above” which makes this awareness seem more like a new, slightly unexpected struggle for Tweedy rather than an unwelcome but long-foreseen outcome. It’s a terrific burden to bear, and Tweedy spends much of his time on WARM exploring what it means to have contributed a body of work that has deeply affected the musical perspectives and emotional palates of thousands for multiple decades, while also devoting space to the effects that relationship has had on him personally. Only one track after “Bombs Above,” he delivers “Some Birds,” a devastatingly guilty condemnation of himself as a prod rather than a salve to the masses’ suffering. Tweedy even finds his own form of redemption in this strange metacognitive realm—on “From

Far Away,” the singer contemplates his own hypothetical death and upon it he humbly asks us, his fellow dealers, to take everything from him.

It’s a total comfort to hear this songwriter’s first love letter to his friends, family, and massive worldwide audience with only his name on it. It feels like it’s taken him all this time to figure out exactly what to say, to us and to himself. “When a sunny day turns to rain, think of me,” he soothes on “I Know What It’s Like.” He’s told us this before, over and over again. On and on and on, Wilco will love you baby, because Wilco hurts the same as you and we need each other to get through all this shit. It’s not that Tweedy’s musical career has been the only one to commit to this duality of thrilling personal coping mechanism and unflinching listener support system; it’s just that there aren’t many musicians out there who can accomplish the feat with such sweet, heartbreaking sincerity as to confess to all of us that he actually means it. And we feel better because we know he does. For years now, I’ve known exactly where to go when I haven’t known how I could possibly proceed. Wilcoping has stitched and restitched my feeling fabric for a decade, and there are thousands who’ve experienced this for three times that long.

WARM feels somehow like an arrival for Jeff Tweedy, even though the first thing you may notice are his aged vocal cords. It reignites the classic question of when a song stops being a Jeff Tweedy song and starts becoming a Wilco song, since the ones here are so original, fully fledged, and by this point heroically familiar thanks to the timeless musical style of its creator. The pieces of Tweedy are all here, from haunting poetic nonsense that screams truth to the evolved nervy guitar solos that owe much to Neil Young’s fragmented genius, from how-did-he-do-that strumming techniques to how-was-that-so- obvious surprises of melodic bliss. A Wilco fan can almost hear the parts of the other members, which is probably aided by Glenn Kotche’s eternally perfect percussion. And by record’s end, like all of the things in life that demand our thoughts and feelings’ attention, or like a house from some past moment that was so comfortable it hugged you, we want to return to it. We recognize the value not only in moving forward, but in knowing that to do that the right way, we must see the value in the world around us as it is right now, no matter if that’s the best or the worst place we could be.

Fudge Sandwich appears in the blink of an eye and somehow before what was supposed to be his fourth full-length album in 2018. Ty has dived fully into his sandbox of musical portraiture to deliver a lightning bolt of purely fun rock and roll, and a gleaming love letter to his diverse idols. The stunning rendition of John Lennon’s “Isolation” flies thanks to an eerily on-point vocal performance that practically reincarnates the Beatle, while Segall’s trademark glam and fuzz explodes the ballad into a relentless freakout. He somehow recreates the unhinged guitar and vocal tones of Amon Düül II on highlight “Archangel Thunderbird,” ripping and howling amidst typically funkified Freedom Band percussion. On the album closer, Segall captures every ounce of the heartbreak and longing of Sparks’ near-perfect “Slowboat” to remind everyone just how special the rocker is at balladic arrangement.

Elsewhere, it’s Segall's deranged explosion of his source material that achieves these tracks’ transcendence. Ty growls out War’s “Low Rider” like some cursed thing atop a pit of synths that swirls and screams. Neil Young’s “The Loner” and Dead’s classic “St. Stephen” both get almost complete retreatments, shoved through a meat grinder of punk and freak out and unleashed as euphoric exercises in heavy. In one of the record’s softest moments, Segall casts The Dils’ frantic “Class War” in an entirely different light. Segall delivers a top-shelf LA power pop gem with a majorly satisfying Segallian solo to boot.

Fudge Sandwich arrived out of nowhere, but it feels like one of Segall's’ most natural installments. The psych master has paid respects to his musical heroes throughout his career with consistently impressive covers, and a whole album of them is just a peach of a thing for Segall fans. He somehow manages to make an album of novelties stand all the way up as a record of real value, delivering a truly inspired celebration of his predecessors and a first-rate rock record at once.