Marked in the Valley

Josh Tillman is dead serious. You can tell by the sound of
his voice, a flickering whisper that illuminates his songs as well as a
candle might, burning steadily but never providing enough light to
fully dispel the shadows. His songs may seem like typically tender,
acoustic-based fare on a casual listen, but they’re mired in old-time
religion and an ambience carved out of a fertile but unforgiving
natural landscape. He’s not interested in enlightenment or
transcendence at the top of the mountain; the Seattle singer/songwriter
instead sounds bunkered in an isolated log cabin in the valley, near a
gushing, ice-cold stream, singing about being human in all its mundane
beauty.

At least, that’s the impression I get. Tillman doesn’t like to
examine his creative process too closely. “It is interesting to talk
about within certain parameters,” he tells me. “But I kind of see it as
being, for myself, more [of] a metaphysical experience. And that can
retroactively lose its value the more you try to frame it in a certain
language.”

His newest album, Year in the Kingdom, closer resembles his
hushed, sparser early material than it does last year’s Vacilando
Territory Blues, which contained a few bluesy detours into rock ‘n’
roll territory. Kingdom, on the other hand, contains almost
nothing in the way of electric guitars—or even a drum kit, which
might surprise casual fans who first became aware of Tillman after he
joined Fleet Foxes last year as their drummer.

His association with Fleet Foxes hasn’t really affected his solo
work, probably because he’d been doing it long before joining the band.
“I guess there’s more attention in the immaterial world of the
internet, but what is that?” Tillman says. “It’s not like I’m playing
for more people than I was two or three years ago. I’m still playing
for 50 or 60 people a night. I guess I give people more credit than
that. People know that I’m not going to get onstage and play Fleet
Foxes songs so they’re not going to come to the show for that
reason.”

Year in the Kingdom is likely too subtle to win the kind of
audience that Fleet Foxes have, but that’s a testament to its
unvarnished, quiet beauty. There’s a release at the conclusion of
“There Is No Good in Me” when voices and hammered dulcimer rise to a
stunning climax, and elsewhere a few soothing string arrangements
invoke the ghost of Nick Drake. In all, however, Kingdom inhabits an unforgiving terrain that’s both desolate and honest.

It should be interesting to hear its sparse songs performed on this
tour, Tillman’s first in the US with a backing band. He’s joined by his
brother Zach Tillman of Pearly Gate Music (who is opening the show),
along with Sera Cahoone’s drummer Jason Merculief, pedal steel player
Bill Patton, and Colin English of the excellent Seattle band Final
Spins.

In the meantime, Tillman is content to keep things mysterious, both
for his audience and for himself. “I try not to think along the lines
of becoming a better songwriter,” he says. “I’m not really interested
in becoming better at the craft of songwriting. I’d rather try to
maintain some level of ignorance, I guess—just to be a more
potent receptor as opposed to muddling things up with a kind of
arbitrary criteria for what makes a good song, you know?”