Ryley Walker - The Lillywhite Sessions

Pitchfork 78

On what may seem like a readymade gag, the psych-folk favorite covers the lost Dave Matthews Band album in full. He convincingly connects his adolescent love to his adult explorations.

The Guardian 60

(Dead Oceans)

There’s a history of albums being covered in their entirety, from Laibach’s martial reinterpretation of the Beatles’ Let It Be to Ryan Adams taking on Taylor Swift’s 1989 (and losing). What sets Chicago singer-songwriter Ryley Walker’s reappraisal of Dave Matthews Band’s The Lillywhite Sessions apart is that the original songs, – atypically downbeat, and recorded in 2000, were never formally released, although they were leaked online soon afterwards, and many ultimately appeared in re-recorded form on 2002’s Busted Stuff.

Walker considers the album such a guilty pleasure that it warranted a radical reworking. Throughout, he brings a more expansive touch to the solid, blue-collar jamming of the originals. Whereas the DMB’s Sweet Up and Down was a pleasant if unremarkable slice of lightly jazzy soft rock, Walker performs an instrumental version with saxophone thrust centre stage. JTR, meanwhile, is given a five-minute coda of skronking sax and post-rock envelope-pushing worthy of Jim O’Rourke.