Tyler Key

Tyler Key is trying to change your mind about Americana. It’s not all wide-brimmed Stetsons and songs about trains and other doses of nostalgia. Key’s been releasing albums under his own name since 2017’s Long Run the Fugitives, a sparse folk record that marked a departure from his bar-band roots. Wild Azaleas and Other Tall Tales is the third album by the Athens songwriter, and like 2019’s Local Support, he recorded it at Standard Electric with Damon Moon at the helm. This time he’s backed by a laundry list of talented family and friends, including his brother Seth Key on electric guitar, Ryan Moore on drums, Spencer Thomas on piano, Garrett Hibbs on bass, and Kimberly Simpson on backing vocals.

The title track does what Key does best, pairing potent storytelling and vintage-vibe rock and roll. The song rocks in a ‘70s Dylan meets Sticky Fingers-era Stones fashion with a country backbeat and a saxophone hook from Martin Anderson bleeding into electric guitar and gospel-chop piano. The layered narrative rewards close listeners. We get the story of a kid’s draft-dodger father skipping out on his young family, taking refuge in Tijuana, then returning years later like nothing ever happened. In the last verse, the kid asks his father about what he’d seen down there and quickly gets the silent treatment, nothing but buzzing cicadas and imagination. Been there, kid.

Key sprinkles this outlaw tale with period-correct imagery: the parking lot of an A&P, a T-top Pontiac, nods to Springsteen and Herb Alpert. It’s this mix of immersive songwriting and riveting detail that places this record a cut above his peers in the Americana genre.

--Immersive Atlanta