Ty Clayton - An Animist Hymnal (2024)

Ringo Star once asked “What do I do when my love is away? Does it worry you to be alone? How do I feel by the end of the day? Are you sad because you’re on your own?” Although this sentiment was most profoundly conveyed by the late, great Joe Cocker, it nonetheless expressed a need for a little help from friends.

It is with the help of friends Idaho’s own singer/songwriter/blues-slinger Ty Clayton has achieved his album An Animist Hymnal. Make no mistakes, this isn’t just a release, it is an achievement. With contributions from Elliot Kuhlgreen (upright bass), Lindsey Hunt (vocals, violin), Jason Grazian (drums), Neal Goldberg (guitar vocals), Matt Takiff (saxophone), Dave Manion (dobro), Dave Henry (vocals), Ali Knox (vocals), and Scott Tyler (mandolin), Ty Clayton captures a bluesy sense of high desert escape strewn across eight solid tracks.

An Animist Hymnal emerges from a smoldering, almost tent revival-esc call to the record with equal admissions/reflections on the world around us today in “Invocation,” standing firm with “we pretend the world belongs, just to us humans, no wonder so many of us got tears in our eyes.” The Waits-ian delivery carries “No Man’s Land” where Clayton, et al. strikes the sobering “this is no man’s land/‘cause we belong to her” as it dances against a blues backdrop that sucks you in without mercy. From “Love-Drunk” through “This Sweet Disease,” the collective talents that aided Ty Clayton in his latest record, have reached deep into the pulse of the world around us and molded an audible geography that takes us out of the traffic, the desk jobs, and the like, transporting us to a world of grit, expanse, and release. Plainly put, it has been quite a while since we’ve seen an organic, independent blues record like An Animist Hymnal.

There’s no doubt it was a collective that made An Animist Hymnal come to life, but it is apparent the heart behind it is the experiences and vision of Ty Clayton that hold it all together. It is a record that strikes deep into your core; your soul, as it pulls threads of organic culmination weaved from stepping out of the hustle and bustle of everyday life for, virtually, all of us. As Clayton described just one part of the process, “one November and got snowed in, so we [Clayton and Kuhlgreen] hung out by the fire in my sheepherder’s tent for a couple days fleshing out and leaning into these tunes.” He developed the tracks “often alone carrying my guitar to some far-flung sagebrush desert canyon or strapping it to a boat and scribbling words along a wild river” were written over a long period of time. Recorded, mixed, and mastered at the Tonic Room in Boise, Idaho and An Animist Hymnal is out now.