WILLIAM TYLER
Time Indefinite PSYCHIC HOTLINE
Tyler: a brave new sound that plumbs labyrinthine depths
ANGELINA CASTILLO
9/10
Blown-out beauty and found-sound abstractions on the Nashville guitarist’s expansive fifth. By Tom Pinnock
FOR William Tyler fans, the last five years have been an exciting, if confusing, time: just what would the Nashville guitarist’s follow-up to 2019’s Goes West, his last proper solo album, sound like? Each of his varied releases since then could have been a blueprint: 2020’s haunted and experimental mini-album New Vanitas, perhaps, or his acoustic, gnarled soundtrack to Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow; 2021’s Lost Futures, a more accessible collaboration with Portland guitarist Marisa Anderson, or his “Frozen Shelter” piece, 39 minutes of scorched radio static and frayed sound; even 2023’s Secret Stratosphere, a kraut-boogie live set with backing band The Impossible Truth, featuring psychedelic pedal steel guru Luke Schneider. That this half-decade of wayward experimentation also coincided with a stretch of mental health issues for Tyler, and a struggle with alcohol, is surely no coincidence.