Tyler Butler

Tyler Butler is a singer-songwriter from Edmonton, Canada, whose latest album Winter King is an hypnotizingly hypothermic selection of slow acoustic folk music. Released via Old Ugly Recording Company, Winter King explores the personal and social life in the long, dark Edmonton winter. Recorded in Butler’s apartment, he made little to no effort to remove the sounds of his apartment when the record was made. A great call as the sounds give the record life in an otherwise frigid, barren world outside.

Borrowing heavily from winter mythology, Winter King also possesss an extremely personal and intimate theme and feel in a spacious soundscape. Adding to the candid vibe is Butler’s wispy voice barely raising above a whisper and warming the cold air. You can just picture Butler huddling over his guitar as his breath escapes in trails of smoke as he sings.

The entire album is beautifully bleak and dark. It’s the kind of beauty found only on a private midnight stroll in the moonlit snow with only the icy wind upon your skin and the crystalline stars in a clear black sky.

Winter King is a perfect reflection of the songwriter and the environment in which it was recorded. It is the Great White North personified. Certainly one of the best albums I’ve heard thus far this year. - Common Folk Music Blog

Listening to Tyler Butler’s Winter King is akin to the feeling one has when they’re tucked warm and safe in their bed on a cold winter’s night. His music is calming, soothing, nearly magical.

Butler in fact almost creates his own world over the course of the album’s eight songs. It’s a very natural world, as many of the song titles attest to, such as “Kingfisher” and “Waxwing” (in fact the last four songs are all dedicated to birds) and even “Barghest” (which is a mythological black dog). The minimalistic folk that Butler plays as musical accompaniment to this beautiful world is perfectly suited. There is usually not more than the picking of an acoustic guitar with the occasional accordion.

In addition to the instruments, Butler’s voice is also soothing to behold. He sings gently, just powerful enough to make an impact but not so loud as to sound manic. He is always in control of every phrase he sings, such as in the beginning of “Barghest”: “There is that which makes you frightened/It is the coming of the darkness.”

What makes this album so completely arresting is likely the quiet passion that Butler inserts into all of his lyrics. No one song seems more trivial than the previous; each song contains its own story, something that some songwriters have forgotten. “Child-Ghost” for example is a story that could probably have a novel based on it; “Morana” tells the tale of a woman with “a crown of wild fores hair”; “Plover” disturbingly talks of a girl who could potentially drown.

Winter King is most certainly not an album to be enjoyed to fill silence while you’re doing something else- this is one experience that requires your absolute and full attention. Before too long you’ll probably fall under the enchantment of Tyler Butler and his all-encompassing mythological world. - Grayowl Point