Peter Oyloe's debut album, Words & Music, is precisely crafted, fueled by a captivating and rare talent. By his own words, Oyloe is "an old soul, raised on homegrown goats milk and thoughtful solitude, whose love of love and people is constant and strong."
Perhaps it's the well-tended, organic Iowa roots that have enabled Oyloe's talents to far exceed most of his contemporaries. For an industry that has been heavily polluted with the mass marketed-whir of overproduced pop singers or the homogonous drone of the Indie scene (the title of which loses meaning daily as its forefront members become increasingly featured on MTV and mainstream radio), Oyloe's arrival in the music world is a long awaited breath of fresh air.
Oyloe grew up listening to his father's record albums and came to love such music as The Beatles, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Cat Stevens and Michael Martin Murphy's "Geronimo's Cadillac". Buying his first guitar for ten dollars, he was compelled to start playing and writing immediately and begin his search for the perfect melody, one he has yet to satisfy.
Through his music, Oyloe plays tribute to those he admires while managing to keep the sound his own and something hand-tailored for the modern day.
His lyrics are clearly-focused, revealing simple truths grounded in the enigma of fierce emotional intimacy: lost loves, personal challenges, misunderstanding, lies and unrealized dreams. "My music haunts me," Oyloe says. "It frustrates me, it is soothing and challenging, dangerous and disastrous, beautiful and bland"
Oyloe's vocal talents fall easily into the ranks of legends such as Jeff Buckley and James Taylor, saturating every song with lush melodies, sometimes soaring and crooning and sometimes delicate and understated. His vocal ranges alone traverse a broad spectrum of emotion, at times dark and contemplative, reflecting the stark honesty and ardor Oyloe brings to his music, and other times driven by an upward grace and sweeping romanticism.
Words & Music technically isn't the first album Oyloe has worked on. He previously recorded a full-length album with college-friend Tommy Mokas and their group, Coldwater Poets. However, due to lack of funding and Oyloe's decision to move to New Zealand, the project was never able to be released. It was in New Zealand that Oyloe pushed the boundaries of his artistry in several compelling and remarkable directions-being cast as Marius in the country's production of Les Miserables, he added to a long list of credentials as a actor/musical theatre singer, Oyloe also traveled extensively, where he found much of the time and inspiration to write and compose his own music.
What makes Words & Music even more remarkable is that it is entirely self-produced and recorded locally and comes with the support of several local Decorah, Iowa area musicians.
The beauty and magnitude of Oyloe's talents are sure to raise the standards in the music industry of today and for generations to come.
Quote: "This young man is more than a simple folk singer."
By Ken Mowery
Oyloe is a talented singer/songwriter whose art has been forged amid the small-town isolation and pace of rural Iowa. These roots are discernible both in the music and in the contemplative lyrics. They give a poetic quality to Oyloes writing that draws the artist and his audience together in a profoundly introspective experience. It's a transcendence made possible by Oyloes judicious employment of vivid imagery coupled with moment in time snapshots of real-life emotions. The end result is music that listeners will find broadly relevant and deeply stirring.
The CD is very well done, with traditional folk instrumentation featuring Oyloe on acoustic guitar and vocals, Jody Koenig on bass and electric guitar, Erik Berg playing drums and percussion, Tom Bourcier piano and organ, John Goodin on mandolin and both Jeroen Van Tyn and Amber Dolphin playing violin. Although all of the instrumental performances are strikingly flawless, it is Oyloes dynamic vocal range and emotive timbre as he sings his songs that sets this project apart.
Oyloe has so seamlessly bound the melodic contour of his songs with his unique voice and lyrics that listeners may not discern the amazing merit of the vocal track at first. Soaringly high passages in songs like Long After Its Gone, Dreaming of the Underwater, My Bathe With You, and I Am make it clear that this young man is more than a simple folk singer. In fact, songs like these make it difficult to classify Oyloes music with their eclectic sound and almost ethereal mix of folk, jazz and rock.
Interestingly, in spite of the dreamy ambience of this CD, the song I Am, with its hook-like refrain toward the end, is certainly the most memorable song and may even be the best song on the entire project. However, that is a distinction that could well be given to just about any of the tracks, which is to say this is a very good CD. Once added to your collection, it will collect no dust because you will find yourself often returning to enjoy the Oyloe journey again.
Yes. I play where ever they will have me. I love performing live, I love the intimacy and energy of it. I had a beautiful night performing in the living room of a friend for 100 ticketed guests. The room was dark and quiet and there was laughing and tears. It was a magic night with some snow falling quietly outside the windows that looked out over a snowy field by a stream.
Wow... I guess I would have to say the songwriters of the late sixties... the Beatles, James Taylor, Tim Buckley, Cat Stevens, Crosby Stills Nash and Young. These guys wrote amazing music...it stood the test of time and it will continue to.
I use a variety of acoustic guitars... a Taylor, some Rogues, whatever I can get people to lend me sometimes.
When you listen to Words & Music for the first time, if you know nothing of Peter Oyloe, you may think you've stumbled late upon a seasoned song-writer and start scouring the records bins for his early albums. But amazingly Words & Music is Oyloe's first, and it will leave you hungering for more.
Oyloe's songs are undeniably infectious and poetic, but I have to apologize immediately for using those words, for they can be as misleading as they are accurate.
The songs are not malignantly infectious, like a Carpenters ditty. They are more insidiously yet salubriously so - entering somehow along your spinal chord and remaining there until a quiet moment, when they resurface again almost neurally to enhance the pleasure of your solitude. You do not hum an Oyloe tune while caught in traffic, tapping your fingers on the steering wheel. His songs become instead a part of the soundtrack of your interior life.
The lyrics are full of stunning images, evocative lines. They are poetic - but they are not poetry. I do not think most of them would have a comparable effect printed alone on a page, nor should they. Instead, they are truly lyrics, melded inseparably to the music, each augmenting the other and creating more meaning (and more pleasure) than each could convey alone. This is what song-writing is all about.
Which brings us to the music itself: It's an alternately delicate and funky combination of folk, jazz, and rock elements - but saying that may be misleading, too. For, ultimately, Words & Music is a syncretistic fusion of such disparate influences as Tim Buckley (only us oldies may remember), Natalie Merchant, REM, David Gray, Tracy Chapman, James Taylor, and Nickel Creek. You may hear others. Yet this is not a derivative album in any sense. It is built upon the past, not a copy of it. That makes Words & Music as intelligent in its composition as it is a sheer joy to hear.
One word about the band. It's accomplished and tight, thinking only to serve each song as best it can. These are talented musicians, and (I hope they forgive me for saying so) all of them are substantially older and more experienced than the young man they are backing. They actually sound like they are playing on the album because they believe in the material and recognize the fledgling genius of the young man who composed it. Listening to Words & Music, you will recognize it, too.
Charlie Langton:
Langton's poetry has appeared in the Antioch Review, the Iowa Review and other periodicals, as well as in the anthology Voices on the Landscape, Contemporary Iowa Poets. He now lives in Decorah, and Keep Silence, But Speak Out, his first book, was published by Iowa's Loess Hills Books.
