Ty Myers would like you to take him seriously. If he didn’t make that clear enough on his freshman LP The Select, the 19-year-old opens his second project with a late-night sip-and-sing about a hookup hangover. It’s the kind of song a teenager might imagine gets played in a jazz club in Midtown; wispy with an easily placed groove, but the frontman’s wails are clearly speaking from some experience.
A lot of Myers’s first effort toyed with and was made fun of for more mature themes that contrasted his youth (what college kid do you know is losing hair over mortgage payments, let alone has one?). Heavy On The Soul, while still full of bluesy ballads and soul-spat lyrics, doesn’t feel like it’s trying nearly as hard to fit into hand-me-down jeans.
Even still, half the fun of watching this sappy melodrama of a career unfold is seeing where Myers grabs onto outside influence, and where he learns to parse it out with more composure. Like most of his freshman class companions, he wears his idols on his sleeve. The most obvious here is a mid-career John Mayer, with Myers fantasizing about the cutting room floor of Battle Studies on tracks like “Me Neither” or “Game Called Love,” where he kicks his feet up on bobbing ballads and heartthrob crooners.
The tributes, while wild-eyed renditions of some of his favorite throwbacks, never fail to evoke some sense of surprise once those barely sanded vocals hit the fuzz and start rolling. It’s important to remember how impressive it is that Myers can mimic some of these rock gods with note-to-note accuracy, all without the help of brown liquor and nicotine, both of which he’s still too young to purchase.
Country music is a nominally relevant designation for Myers, whose skill set and soft spot are more geared toward its sister genres. There are multiple moments where you can hear his affinity for rock music through the countoff before a drop-down chord, with his Texas showing in some sparse, lilting steel notes just a few bars later. Whether it’s a direct callback through a cover of Little Feat’s “Two Trains” with fellow guitar gunner Marcus King, or a Stevie Ray Vaughn stank face moment on “Come On Over Baby,” Myers is insanely giddy to show off. He treats each moment as an opportunity to display just how far his nose has been crammed in the electric songbook to an old audience he hopes to either win over with wiry grooves, or newcomers he’d like to convert to the cause with a seductively smooth tone. Frankly, he probably could grab the attention of both.
Half-intoxicated on the Delta-driven “Gone Too Long,” he spills out the line “don’t know the last time I saw her face, oh they all blend when you live this way,” over a muffled horn section. It sounds like it’s bouncing off of Bourbon Street balconies during Mardi Gras, wading in a melting pot of southern music sensibilities. It’s the kind of music you’d expect your dad to stop and stare at on a street corner, while also being the bar band you wouldn’t want your girlfriend lingering on.
One thing Myers can improve on, and does aptly in a few moments throughout Heavy On The Soul, is learning how to populate his well-decorated spaces with some character and specificity through his lyricism. The Select was impressive for a host of reasons, least of which was the blanket statement soul stanzas he peppered around those infectious shreds, like a sort of Eric Clapton-themed Mad-Libs. He grows up in part on his sophomore record by tacking bits of his still-developing personality onto those ornate walls of sound, highlighting his youth in some pretty striking ways.
On “Through A Screen,” Myers warbles over love found in the digital age, a warped process that blends data and hormones into something sinister over a slick piano you’d find on Adele’s 21. In the chorus, he packs his emotion into a line as blunt as a late-night text when he tells his long-distance lover, “I’ve only known your name for a week, but now I know your insecurities, and in a month, you’ll be telling me you love me.” No riffs, no solos, no need to cloak a feeling that just two thumbs can spell out. His main pulls as an artist aren’t opposed to each other, but Myers seems to soar as a songwriter when his guard is down.
There’s little to suggest that this is only a sophomore album, let alone one coming from a face this fresh. As ruddy-cheeked as Myers still is, he rarely needs to prove himself as much as he does, even if the result plays out like a block party hosted by the best band in town. When he’s not paying tribute to his heroes, he still manages to hook, line, and sinker his audience with a voice that’s itching to be weathered and some poignant moments that reflect the whirlwind of a lifestyle he’s getting accustomed to.
On the other hand, his youth seems to aid his carefree approach to structure, allowing a swimming pool of sonic choices to blend into one big jammy stew. With so many acts trying to bring their listeners back to the good old days, isn’t it time the good old days met the modern listener where they’re at? Myers seems to think so, and Heavy On The Soul is his way of trying to make it happen.
