A giant, tender wave from Billings
William Rockwell Ryerson's new EP offers a horse pill-sized dose of grace.
The Baltimore-to-Montana pipeline is not, in my estimation, particularly robust. But on the rare occasion I bump into someone else who has once called Charm City home, the conversation quickly turns to impeccably raunchy dive bars and ad hoc music festivals and buck-a-shuck oysters, all recalled and relished with sugar-high giddiness — it’s not dissimilar from watching fellow-Montanans encounter each other in the wider world, but with more emphasis on seafood. Because for all the challenges it faces, and its less-than-flattering depictions on HBO, Baltimore remains a singularly welcoming, exciting and inclusive American city; fertile ground for creative types of all stripes whose cumulative work has long buoyed a wide ecosystem of weirdness and delight. If there’s any other place in the world where Norman Maclean’s proud assessment of western Montana — “The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula" — rings true for me, it’s Baltimore.
A few years ago, the artist William Rockwell Ryerson, who makes music under the moniker Giant Wave, moved from Baltimore to Billings. And he has, to my ear, brought his hometown’s air of unencumbered artistic freedom with him. While his past work — warm, chill indie-pop — certainly has an experimental streak, the new “EP 3,” his first release written after moving to the Treasure State, radiates a particularly unpretentious and joyful sense of experimentation.
These three songs bob from style to style, picking up instruments and moods and quickly letting them go, like a wave collecting stones as it reaches shore. Take the second track, “Dream Liver.” It starts with a gorgeous, intricate acoustic guitar line that brings to mind the virtuoso William Tyler. Soon, however, it veers into a buzzing, synth-driven stomp before shifting, again, into a meditative, cyclical vocal melody fringed by psychedelic woodwinds. Or listen to the guitar solo that burns its way like acid through the otherwise dulcet “Shadow + Light” — no matter how many times I listen to the song, the solo manages to catch me off guard.
If these songs have a through-line, it’s their tenderness, embodying the coziness and insularity of a Montana winter (although calling the past two months “winter” feels a bit disingenuous, the weather having been as impotent as Matt Regier’s tenure as Senate President). In an era of exhausting bravado, Ryerson’s inward-facing intimacy hits like a gust of fresh air. “It’s like I left the world behind,” he sings, serenely, on “Shadow + Light.” It’s hard to say whether he’s referring to his move to Montana, or maybe just taking a break from Politico, but no matter; listening along, the sentiment is mutual.