Stereo Embers The Podcast 0453: Ryan Walsh (Hallelujah The Hills)

"Deck" Over the course of their nearly-fifteen album career, Hallelujah The Hills have established themselves as one of the most unpredictable, inventive and fascinating bands on the planet. Hard to pick favorites in their discography because every album is unbelievable--there's 2012's No One Knows What Happens Next or 2013's Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Trashcan or 2016's A Band Is Something To Figure Out--pick any one you like and you can't go wrong. Speaking of picking the Boston outfit's new effort Deck requires you to do just that. Or, asks you to do just that. Or, if you don't want to, you kind of are because not making a choice is a choice. A sprawling, thrilling and altogether deliciously ambitious project, Deck is arranged into four loosely thematic elements that correspond to the suits of a deck of cards. Each suit has its own musical style; introspective spare numbers, orchestrally arranged compositions, indie rock stomp and idiosyncratic tracks that wind and loop and twist and rattle and diverge tunefully away. Along the way you'll run into Craig Finn of the Hold Steady, Ezra Furman, Mission of Burma's Clint Conley and Will Dailey. There's a song for every card in a deck and this fifty-two track effort is filled with surprises, detours, hard lefts into the darkness and jet-powered pulls into whipping storms and sunny wide open fields where a lone guitar angles under the sunlight then bursts into flames. It's hard to explain but it's easy to experience so I urge you to pick up Deck and toss it into the air and follow it wherever it goes. Ryan Walsh is the band's braintrust and visionary and he's the perfect frontman and musical director--his compositions are literate and unexpected and his voice filled with presence and urgency. Walsh's book Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 is genius by the way, so get that if you have a chance. But for now, let's let Mr. Walsh cut the deck and walk us through what's happening with his marvelous band. www.hallelujahthehills.com www.bombshellradio.com (http://www.bombshellradio.com) www.stereoembersmagazine.com www.alexgreenbooks.com (http://www.alexgreenbooks.com) Stereo Embers: BLUESKY + IG: @emberspodcast Email: editor@stereoembersmagazine.com