To hit a mid-song bum note would have been like puncturing a tire while accelerating into a hard speedway turn. Throughout his set Tuesday night at the Echo, the Chicago artist, touring in support of his new album, вЂњPrimrose Green,вЂќ precisely maneuvered his fingers to strike notes with an undistorted clarity. It was necessary that he hone the machine. вЂњItвЂ™s all part of the act,вЂќ he joked while tweaking tones across the dozen strings for a few minutes, ringing each note until, with an angel-heralding strum, they hummed in sweet harmony.

ItвЂ™s not altogether shocking to have the insight that Walker improvised lots of the lyrics while in the studio from scraps of handwritten journal entries from a harrowing 2013 tour.The folk guitarist Ryley Walker sat alone on a stool, legs crossed, a sound system well-balanced at the edge of feedback and a spotlight directed on him, tuning his 12-string acoustic. He mirrors this chanting delivery on вЂњSweet Satisfaction,вЂќ this pleading yelp, lengthening the final word of the line вЂњIвЂ™d rather be dead,вЂќ which opens up into a psych-jam freakout, lassoing the kind of free-range climax of a punk rock Jerry Garcia. WalkerвЂ™s vocal dexterity is such that an essentially minimalist song like this can, through the rigors of repetition, take on another, holier form-something almost spiritually resounding, like a rain dance on the Plains. Its power is delivered in Morrison peyote visions and chants, like tribal warrior cries. The trippy plodding of вЂњSame MindsвЂќ commences with another inquisitive bass line, so dutifully recorded you can hear the frizzes in the fingers on the frets. The spanning of the overpoweringly American traditions of jazz and folk, psychedelia and experimental music coalesces on tunes like the jammy вЂњSummer Dress.вЂќ The song emerges from Walker and companyвЂ™s creative alchemy as a groovy, rhythmic bender, replete with a sleepy upright low-end, introducing fertile sonic real estate that encompasses hypnotic guitars, splashy drums, blotter-paper keyboards and a menagerie of counter-melodic noises converging.

The album benefits in scope and concept from the added incentive of a trio of hardened Chicago improv jazz vets (drummer Frank Rosaly, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, bassist Anton Hatwich and vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz), creating a bridge of American musicality thatвЂ™s tough to compare to much else. Driven by skittering piano runs and a warm, understated double-bass line, WalkerвЂ™s guitar progressions are advanced and thoughtful, but also accessible and timeless-less of the virtuosic variety and more of the American Beauty workingmanвЂ™s fretwork: Honest and subdued, yet strong simultaneously. WalkerвЂ™s guitar chops are renowned, yet not front-and-center on a majority of the record, beginning with the title track, which opens the LP. Forgetting the convenient shortcut of crying вЂњrehashвЂќ when a new artist contributes to the continuum of a tradition is not only advised, itвЂ™s implored with an album as terrifically imaginative as Primrose Green. This is important when listening to WalkerвЂ™s sophomore album, Primrose Green. The fact that the breadth of his musicianship actually matches the persona-steeped as it is in both the minimalist traditions of Chicagoland experimental jazz and the fingerpicking wizardry of primitive guitar folk heroes like Glenn Jones-paints Walker as a real-deal revivalist of the most unironic order. That Ryley Walker appears to embody the determined, shaggy-haired guitar artiste of the austere folk вЂ70s is only one of his endearments.

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