Get the latest gossip

‘I don’t want to retreat any more’: William Tyler on grief, alcoholism and his healing new album

After a painful midlife crisis, the former Lambchop sideman went to rehab, rejected ambition and embraced lo-fi recording. It made for his most startling music yet – with a surprise Four Tet collaboration still to come

“That film is very personal but very meandering – it’s about him having a child but watching his father die, all these mixed-emotion, heavy life events happening on top of each other,” he says.” That’s Tyler’s experience of the past four years: pain and joy; growth and loss: “I wanted to convey that emotional reality is not linear.” He is voluble and precise about this being “the strangest time that I can remember being an American” as scary as it is ridiculous; about “chronic digital loneliness”, individualism, isolation, Republicans jettisoning social responsibility, the right’s weaponisation of counterculture: “It’s not an empathetic model.” (He would make a great professor, and sends links to relevant books after the interview.) “It’s painful to imagine a new future when your sense of self has been so shaken, or you’ve had tragic loss, but reclaiming that agency is crucial to a holistic self-actualisation.” He considers himself to be starting again: “There’s a degree of having to relearn how to do this.” He left Merge for the smaller, artist-run label Psychic Hotline and will tour more gently.

Get the Android app