TYLER BALLGAME
For The First Time, Again ROUGH TRADE
Characterisation and candid expressionism on songwriter’s debut.
By Sharon O’Connell
Tyler Ballgame: more modesty than melodrama
7/10
PERSONAL disclosure and pop music have long been intertwined, but audience expectation of the former is now almost vampiric – the closer it is to the bone, the more toothsome it seems. On the debut from Rhode Island native Tyler Perry, autobiographical candour lands very differently, with more modesty than melodrama, and along the lines of ’60s and ’70s croon pop and classic rock rather than modern maximalism. With a superbly modulated swoop that echoes Orbison and Elvis, the singer-songwriter, now based in LA, voices dejectedness, yearning and lack of self-acceptance, but also the relief won through uncynical sharing.
There’s more to For The First Time, Again than personal truth-telling with a vintage flavour, though. As realised by Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado – whose production credits include The Killers, The Lemon Twigs and Miley Cyrus – and musician Ryan Pollie (aka Los Angeles Police Department), the material evinces its own kind of indie-fied romanticism, born of what Perry has described as the need for “experiences we can surrender to”. Recorded live in an analogue studio by players including Rado and Pollie, the set leans on keyboards, organ and acoustic guitar while summoning the ghosts not only of Elvis and Orbison but also Lennon, Lee Hazlewood, Nilsson and, more surprisingly, Bowie in his glam era. Or maybe not so surprisingly, given the repertoire of several hundred songs that Perry amassed in his years spent playing local bars as a covers singer, before fate threw him a lifeline.