Who's Breathing?

VINYL FORMAT. With his new album Who's Breathing?, Ryan showcases some of his new songs which, not unlike the drink that's named after him, are both eclectic and sweetly intoxicating. The first half is a top-heavy, bleary-eyed amble through the metaphysical country moves made familiar through his work in The Silt. Central to these songs is Ryan's heady, almost surrealist lyrics, which traipse commonplace folk themes on the slant and uneven ground of a funhouse. Here his way with a turn of phrase demonstrates its dexterity amid slinking caterpillar accompaniments (including a rest stop-style pedal steel and even an English horn pilfered from the AM waves). The second half assumes the mentalist lounge approach, that particular sound not unfamiliar to those who attend the monthly Ryan Driver Quartet appearances at the Tranzac bar in Toronto.