Kieran Hebden and William Tyler’s album 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s is out September 19th on Eat Your Own Ears.
The duo previously collaborated on the once-off psych-jazz release ‘Darkness Darkness’ in 2023.
The album was made after the pair bonded over ‘80s American country and folk music (Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Joe Ely) and the guitar player David Grissom.
41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s was recorded in Los Angeles in 2022 in Sargent Recorders studio.
The song out today is a cover of a Lyle Lovett track ‘If I Had a Boat’, and is an 11-minute take on the track.
Kieran Hebden says:
I met William Tyler at Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee back in 2013. We had mutual friends and kept in touch. Every now and then the idea would come up of us working together. We first tried it remotely, sending ideas back and forth, which resulted in our 12” release Darkness Darkness. The plan was to get into a studio together, which we managed in early 2022 in Los Angeles at the Sargent Recorders studio where my friend Sam (Floating Points) had just made his album with Pharoah Sanders.
We discussed references for an album and Godspeed You Black Emperor, Fennesz and AM oldies radio stations came up. But the main influence was found when we discovered a shared deep connection to ‘80s American country and folk music – artists like Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Joe Ely. My father was a huge fan of this sound and through my teenage years I heard this music most days and was taken to see loads of performances. The guitar player David Grissom made a huge impact on me as a kid learning to play. It’s not an influence that I usually mention but it’s in there more than I realise and must have helped me develop my sound and ideas.
It turns out that William’s father was working in Nashville as a songwriter during this period and actually knew people like David Grissom. So William had grown up with this music as well and knew all the stuff that I was talking about and we both felt that it had shaped our styles.
Our idea for the album was to make music that focused on that influence and brought it to the front of our awareness. We’d record the guitars in the studio, exploring styles and sounds from that music, and then I’d take it all home to my computer and bring it into my other world.
A cover of the Lyle Lovett song, “If I had a Boat” was the most literal pull from this ‘80s country sound. We also recorded long improvisations around chords, patterns and tones from songs we remember from growing up. The Lyle Lovett cover ended up over 11 minutes long.
I spent almost two years doing the computer bit of the album and sometimes sent stuff back over to William who added more overdubs and ideas in response. On some tracks, all that’s left of the guitars are digital fragments of sound making rhythmic textures. Taking it slow allowed us to create a new sound out of this shared teenage experience and gift from our fathers.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
