​Basement’s Best: Ryley Walker anything but green on ‘Primrose’

From the dawn of drum machines and samplers to the neat grids of GarageBand and ProTools, the creative process for solo musicians has been greatly augmented by technology.

Stars are born from viral videos, and entire albums are recorded in bedrooms across the world, intangibly contained on hard drives without a single note leaving the creator’s headphones.

While this technology boom has effectively dismantled the once forbiddingly expensive studio complex down to a few keystrokes, consequently eliminating the need for engineers, producers and even other musicians, it seems something is being lost between the jump from spools of tape to seas of binary code. When instrument tracks, infallibly on-pitch and mechanically rhythmic, can be dragged and dropped, what’s the use of live musicians?

Any teenager that’s stumbled through “Seven Nation Army” in their friend’s basement can attest that there is something truly magical about collaborative creation and a well-directed jam. Built on the irreproducible chemistry of a small band firing on all cylinders, jazz-folk picker Ryley Walker’s sophomore album, “Primrose Green,” is a rock-solid testament to that alchemy.

Leading with the title track, a jaunty workout knotted with fingerpicked acoustic guitars, pastoral piano twitters and liquid fretwork electricity, Walker and his handpicked crew of Chicago jazz musicians astound with effortless virtuosity. As the band segues from criss-crossing solos to a clean finish, it’s clear that Walker is far more concerned with bottling his band’s instrumental lightning than penning the next smash folk-pop ditty.

To the modern ear, Walker has few contemporaries. The field of melting-pot-minded guitarists is sparse, with few standouts like Steve Gunn and Blake Mills coming to mind.

To the record collector’s ear, however, “Primrose Green” is sweet sugar. Comparisons to avant-folk legend Tim Buckley and English folk-rockers Pentangle are inevitable, given Walker’s coolly rich vocal delivery and spidery guitar expansions. Particularly savvy listeners may even notice Walker’s nod to Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy” in naming the album’s penultimate song “All Kinds of You,” which served as the title to his previous record.

Though it may seem as if the record were antiquated upon arrival, this is hardly the case; it bears a stronger resemblance to Van Morrison’s timeless “Astral Weeks” than it does the throwaway ho-heying of today’s charting “folkies.”

But make no mistake, Walker isn’t a mere revivalist. In a not-so-distant past life, he was an active member in the Windy City’s post-rock scene, and his penchant for noisy guitar onslaughts quells any thought that “Primrose” is music to have tea and crumpets by. Evidence enough is the sinister brewer “Sweet Satisfaction,” as it ruptures into a wall of distorted wailings sure to please any hopeful headbanger.

Birthed far outside of copy-paste grids, no computer in sight, “Primrose Green” sails by on a fresh wind and certainly deserves to be freed from the confines of headphones.

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