If you’ve been reading Wake The Deaf for a few years, you’ll probably know the name Tyler Butler. Back in 2011 we featured his début album Winter King and have written about various other records and projects, culminating in one of my favourite interviews we’ve run on the site. In it Butler expanded upon his writing quite a bit, managing to capture what makes his music so interesting (and, in my view, special):
“I certainly value simplicity in my stories, the straight-forward expression of desire and love, a direct relationship between work and fulfillment… My stories often reverse the ‘classic’ love story – my male characters are very vulnerable, their emotions and desires are on display, as prominent as their strength. And my female characters can be strong and demanding.
[The album Violence] is a critique of western masculinity. I live in a place where masculinity often means taking up the most space, being the loudest, having the biggest truck. I think the working characters on this album, and the shift in the sound toward country music provide a critique of this masculinity, showcase a lifestyle in which work is constructive, not violent.”
The self-titled EP from Butler’s latest project, Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends, is the Tyler Butler we know and love but with some welcome additions. The Handsome Friends bring electric guitar, bass, percussion, keys and fiddle, fleshing out Butler’s folk sound into something richer but not necessarily more complicated. Take opening track ‘Bury Me in the Garden’ as an example – a chirpy country foot-tapper which follows the same ideals as all of his music, the added instrumentation managing to add depth without put-on complexity. The song could be said to be beautiful, sad or disturbing, depending on your point of view, and as it’s about life and love, the truth is probably somewhere in between (or maybe all three simultaneously). Here the sweet declarations of love traditional to country music (“I knew nothing until you held me in your arms”) are peppered amongst the dark and strangely comforting truth about our place in the environment, charting the same sort of territory as the Young Jesus album we loved, albeit in a very different way:
When I’m gone, my darling, she’s going to bury me in the garden
lay my weary head under the soil.
My body has been borrowed from the earthworm and the sparrow
I am everything that cycles and returns
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‘Cradle Robber’ follows a similar path, the meandering romance of previous Tyler Butler releases coloured with crunchy folk rock instrumentation. This proves a perfect accompaniment to the surprisingly stark narrative, the gentle love story brought into relief by some rather high stakes, giving the whole thing a serious, severe edge. The natural world has often featured in Butler’s work (check out the track-listing for Winter King), and here it rises to prominence again, every inch of grace matched by a helpless and inadvertent cruelty, where everyone is hurting and each of their actions has a consequence beyond their control:
“I want to steal you from your man
he lays to sleep against your back
my child swells against your stomach
a raven tangle of wind.
So hide the things we do alone
I press my lips on your skin
and sing a song of the forest
I am the egg-thief, the cradle robber”
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Like all good murder ballads, ‘The Stranger (A Death Foretold)’ has love and anguish and the swagger of a life well lived. It tells the tale of a travelling/sleeping narrator, the sort of quiet and determined hero William Gay wrote so well, living life with gentle simplicity and moral rules which push toward his darling and spiral toward tragedy (at least in his dream world). Closer ‘Wandering Man’ continues the Western theme, sung from two perspectives: That of the titular character and of his lover left at home. The song also comes with a three-part short film from one of the Handsome Friends Dylan Rhys Howard (whose beautiful work you can find at Truthful Work Films), which does a far better job of expanding upon the mood and themes than I ever could, so have a look at Pts. 1 & 2 below:
You can buy Tyler Butler and his Handsome Friends now via Bandcamp, and also grab a rather lovely t-shirt.
