William Tyler - Time Indefinite [2 LP]

After crucial stints in Silver Jews and Lambchop, William Tyler emergedwith a string of inquisitive albums that paired his country rearing andclassical enthusiasm with his ardor for experimentation and fieldrecordings. His productive enclave of instrumental music has not onlyushered in new sounds, but also critical new voices. No other soloAmerican guitarist this century has impacted that fecund scene quitelike him. And on the brilliant, bracing Time Indefinite, Tyler's first soloalbum in five years, he steps at last into the widening gyre he helpedcreate. The guitar is the starting point for an album that will make youreconsider not only Tyler but also the possibilities of an entire field. Avortex of noise and harmony, ghosts and dreams, anguish and hope, itis not just a great guitar record. It is a stunning record by a greatguitarist, a masterpiece of our collectively anxious time.In early 2020, as the world teetered at the edge of unrests stillunimagined, Tyler left LA for Nashville, where he'd lived most of his life.Most of his gear and all of his records stayed, awaiting a presumedrapid return. It, of course, wasn't. So as Tyler dealt with the depression,nerves, and questions of those endlessly tense times, he beganrecording ideas with his phone and a cassette deck, resigning himself tothe distortion inherent in those devices. Tyler was talking with KieranHebden about making a record together, and some of these bits felt liketest cases. As that collaboration crept in other directions Tyler magpiedother sounds. He asked longtime friend, producer Jake Davis, to helpstitch them together, opting to embrace the hiss and wobble and tounintentionally make a record that reflected those times andthese-uneasy, damaged, honest.A seesaw of struggle and survival defines these songs, a map ofanguish and belief and the trails that link them. "This is a mental illnessrecord," Tyler will tell you without shame, as open in life and speech ashe is on tape. "It's music about losing your mind but not wanting to,about trying to come back." He doesn't need to tell you that; you canfeel it, possibly recognize it from your own experience.Tyler's albums have been nests of non-musical influences, as he haspivoted between spirituality and philosophy and summoned thelandscapes of the greater American imagination. Time Indefinite is nodifferent, especially in the way it conjures the deeply personal films ofRoss McElwee. In the mid-'80s, he began to make a movie aboutSherman's march through the South, but it spiraled into a tangledhistory about family, loss, and what we do when our best instinctssurrender to the worst things we can imagine. The record is a nod to thisidea, of time's relentless push and our place in, beneath, and beside it. Itis no great revelation that the lives we lead shape the work we make,whether or not we intend that to be the case. In these songs, you canhear Tyler wrestle with incoming demons out loud-addiction, middleage, loneliness, neurosis. All of our struggles are different, but we areunited in having them. This is the soundtrack that Tyler's create.