Inspired by his upbringing in Chicago and the homegrown artists he imbibed there, the record represents, not a 180-degree turn from last year’s Primrose Green, but a step closer to his roots and the brimming concrete wilderness where they seized their length. However, on Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, Walker’s third LP and first with producer-cum-Wilco veteran LeRoy Bach, this worldview shifts into new territory. Thanks to Walker’s ponderous finger-picked guitar style and lithe, warm-throated vocals, his sound seems to be inextricable from a certain folk-jazz pastoralism, a sonic worldview defined by basses walking along riversides and notes drifting through tall-grass prairies. This may be influenced by the Astral Weeks-inspired, mystic-troubadour cover of his sophomore album Primrose Green, or by his resplendently mellowed-out arrangements, or by his lyrical infatuation with edenic couples walking “two by two”, summer dresses clinging to skin, and Midwestern, faux-bucolic landscapes, but it’s not too far off the mark. Critical illustrations of Ryley Walker’s sound usually dip into the same reservoir of pastoral iconography: open meadows, open skies, barbed wire, wind, sunlight that cuts through trees and settles on the backs of new lovers.

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