Watch me watch the sunset take it’s time to settle down
How curious! Just as I was writing a review of the brilliant new Mike Angus album, another little record came into my inbox that is equally indebted to the space it was recorded in. What are the odds!
Brock Tyler is a multi-instrumentalist based out of Edmonton. In the interest of full disclosure we share a delightful mutual friend, but even still I hadn’t heard Tyler’s work until he passed along his new EP, You Can’t Keep The Sun Down. And thank goodness he did.
The brief record was set to tape by Tyler and Tyler alone in a church in Edmonton earlier this year over the course of a few nights. He describes the setting best on his bandcamp page:
You press the record button a lot, and then maybe you erase what you did and try it again. You repeat this several hundred times. Occasionally you might sigh or smile depending on the results you’re getting. You take a break to eat trail mix. You lie down on a pew for awhile and stare at the ceiling. You get up and you press the record button several hundred more times. It sounds kind of lonely, I guess, but in small doses it’s actually sort of cathartic…The room played a big role in the sound of this recording. All the reverb you hear is the church itself; nothing added later, just a few microphones standing around picking things up as I played…You can sometimes hear the wooden ceiling popping in the quiet parts of the songs.
That statement seems utterly ridiculous to me. To think that this album that just sounds so perfectly put together is purely the result of natural occurrences and not some kind of next-level studio wizardry is absurd. The natural reverb created by the space itself is so warm and inviting that it makes Tyler’s songs seem like old favourites right from the first spin. He puts a bit more substance into his arrangements than some bare-bones folk or acoustic acts, bringing the church’s own piano and drum kit into the mix along with his own trumpet and some light percussion.
The mood of the album also belies the creepiness Tyler hints at above, however. The tracks reflect the kind of quiet contemplation that both comes from and leads to a person spending a lot of hours by themselves, making the album (and it’s closing trio of progressively-themed spring month-referencing songs) a very gently, lyrically-driven listen.
That introspection drives the stand-out track here, “On Saturday, Maybe,” which is also one of the most slyly upbeat numbers in this too-brief 15 minute collection. The beat comes from Tyler’s own multi-tracked hand claps, framing a catchy piano track that is bright and poppy, bracing the hopeful lyrics. “I’ve been feeling down of late but I know things will turn around,” he concedes to the listener, “on Saturday, maybe.” The song demonstrates how key Tyler’s voice is to these songs working as well as they do. It’s not quite thin exactly, but his delivery is generally more relaxed, almost detached from the material in a way. When he brings in some falsetto in the verses you get a real feel for the impact that Elliott Smith, Pete Yorn, and Ron Sexsmith albums clearly had on him and his writing. Moreover, the brief “verse” mentioned above ends with the perfect hint of malaise in Tyler’s voice, one that suggests it might not be this Saturday in particular that his world will brighten up.
The most somber number follows with “Because You Live,” a bit of a bait-and-switch due to the fact that it has probably the most hopeful lyrics on the EP. Lyrically the song (which could read as a Christ allusion if you see it through those eyes) is looking up the whole way along, but the languidly finger-picked acoustic guitar, minor piano chords, and distant trumpet create a mood that acts as a hard counter to the message.
The middle track of the ’spring suite’ (closing tracks “The Flowers In April” “The Snow In May” and “June) is also a dip down into melancholy, as Tyler laments a resurgence of winter that makes it seem as though the summer will never come. The piano in “June” almost recalls “The Look of Love” in a way, but the sparse and almost dour guitar chords are made significantly lighter as the song continues. Brock adds trumpet, more hand claps, and some glockenspiel before it all drops away and the song ends with just a wistful remembrance of how it began.
Brief though it may be, You Can’t Keep The Sun Down speaks to the listener both about the quiet spaces in between moments and the happy accidents that make life (and recording music in a meaningful place) worthwhile. He and his songs were respectful of the venue and that solemnity echoes back throughout. This is one worth hearing.
You can buy the EP at Brock’s bandcamp page and you can watch for tour dates on his web site.
