Tyler Lyle – Ithaca
This song is like a drug. I’ve been listening to it all day and it fades all the small things into nothingness and connects me with the wide, wild and unspeakable mystery.
It swells my heart with a quiet but intense joy, and yet I feel like crying for the mundane and the fantastic.
It’s an epic song, a twelve-minute gem of a song, a song that treads with conscious yet light steps through time and place, through thoughts and believes, searching for what was left behind or maybe what was only a dream, and after a journey around the world it ends in failure. Beautiful failure full of dignity and the inevitability of Greek tragedy.
The pictures are so deep and yet so instantly recognizable. Every word is familiar and everything is woven together so beautifully. This is songwriting on the level of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. If you know me just a little bit, you will know that this is the highest accolade I can give.
[thank you, Adam!]
Posted on February 18, 2013, in music, listen and tagged bandcamp, beauty, Bob Dylan, Ithica, Leonard Cohen, music, songsfortheday, songwriting, Tyler Lyle. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
That /was/ indeed a nice song. I played it in the background while looking around the internet, and it had a real soothing effect.
His voice is great, isn’t it? Calm and nice to listen to. If you listen to the song again, watch out for the lyrics, they are stellar!
I love Cohen!
Love the song, “Ithaca.” Did posting on Dylan today. Love Leonard Cohen as well. A young person I know just went to see Leonard Cohen and loved him. Glad a younger generation appreciates him. You know…I wrote to Leonard Cohen when he was living on a Greek Island…many, many, many years ago. He wrote back to me, saying, “Ilene, I really don’t know where I’m going…” in a circular mode. I had saved the letter and then lost it!!!!!
I was a very young teenager. The airmail letter is gone but not forgotten!
WOW. Wow, he wrote you a letter??? Cohen is one of my absolute favourite writers and musicians and just fascinating human beings. Hydra… I almost went there myself, just to see where he’d lived. Wow…
He’s another of my favourites.
And I saw your Dylan post!