tyler lyle :: holy velocity

I’m not the first to write of this album.  I’m not the second or third, even.  But then, I’m also not one of the first few to tell you about the deliciousness of fucking ice cream and my doing so would most likely cause you to crave a cone so what does it matter, really?

Yesterday morning an album fell into my lap, an album laced with summer sounds and winter emotions, mixing those two things into a concoction that a pharmacist of yore would have blended with his mortar and pestle as a remedy for the malaise that affects me when the realization of summer’s end hits me.  I listened intently as ‘The Golden Age & the Silver Girl’ played through once and I let it ruminate.  I listened again and as the coming of the second track approached I was hopeful that the romp with this goodness could continue and that, as is usually the case, I had not been hit with a beautiful track only to be let down by an album.

Seven or so years ago, there was a record player.  That player sat atop a rickety dresser in a bedroom purposely darkened with black woolen blankets on the windows.  I was not working; I should have been.  I was not stable; I could have been had I been willing to leave that room, I think now.  Under the needle of that record player was a live Paul Simon album.  On that album was a song called ‘Duncan’.  Within that song was a winded instrument, blowing so lovely in the background and magnifying the sadness, all the while adding a shred of hope through music notes on a page.  I stood next to that dresser for months (and that’s no exaggeration), hands perched over the needle, waiting for the moment that I would have to move it and steady it for a replay.  Back then, it was that buoyant and undeniably enthusiastic sound in the background of that song that kept me alive.

Yesterday morning, there was that sound again but this time, the words were beckoning me to smile and show my teeth, despite the fact that I think the sentiment behind the song might be something about what I was going through back then, at a time when only the story of Lincoln Duncan felt good.  And so perfectly, that propensity to remember and yet move on remains on every track set forth on The Golden Age…

All these years later someone has taken that dark room and that scratchy vinyl and they’ve put a beautiful, hopeful spin on it.  All those years are gone and we lived through it.  Summer is leaving now too, but she will return, that girl.

The title track, as all others have told, is so worth your time but I encourage you to not stick there — peruse ALL those tracks for they are all worth just as much as the first.  There are banjos and words of love, there are guitars of the twangy slide type, and there are floating horns, all for the good of your soul.  There is an explanation of the album and it’s origins that will melt your heart, if you have a heart at all…

For fuck’s sake, just give this man your six dollars.

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Tyler Lyle :: The Golden Age & the Silver Girl [stream]

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• Golden Age & the Silver Girl
• Tyler Lyle