Monday's Long Song

Kieran Hebden (otherwise known as Four Tet) and William Tyler (guitarist in among others Silver Jews and Lambchop as well as a solo artist) may not seem like obvious candidates for a collaborative album but they share a love of folk, various cosmic sounds and it turns out late 80s country. There's an album on the way in September called 41 Longfield Street Late 80s and ahead of it is this eleven minute beauty, If I Had A Boat...

If I Had A Boat sets out with a long gentle drone, which builds and shifts, some feedback and static drifting in, and then two minutes in, the faint sound of finger picking on a guitar- then, suddenly the guitar is at the foreground on its own. The synths and Kieran Hebden production parts drift back in as Tyler picks away, and gradually everything is balanced again. This is only six minutes in, there's still half the track to go and the second half is a delight, constantly evolving and revolving, melodies and synths, drones and squiggles, round and round.

If I Had A Boat is a cover of sorts- a long instrumental re- interpretation might be a better description- of a Lyle Lovett song from his 1988 album Pontiac. Lyle was in the news a lot in the late 80s, his idiosyncratic take on country garnering a lot of praise. He was also for a while in a relationship with Julia Roberts after they met making the 1992 film The Player and married in 1993 (divorcing two years later).