Buy CD or digital download from bandcamp! Also available on iTunes.

 1. Hymn for the Twenty-First Century
 2. It Will All Come Right
 3. Sparkle Street
 4. Unclosing!
 5. Half a Day Past Noon
 6. A Happy Song Gone Wrong
 7. 1923
 8. Hangman
 9. The Devil's On Horseback
10. Orange Bus
11. One for Two

Unclosing features eleven songs adorned with much instrumentation and playful, intricate arrangements. You'll be a believing witness to trumpet hits, piano solos, delightful girl vocals, brass quartets, an old rickety banjo, rock and roll guitars, more than one cymbal swell, claves, cute little tinkly bells, my grandma's organ, singing friends, handclaps, raindrops, and thunder. A willing listener will be transported by the songs to places near and far; one moment you're riding a train to meet your lover in a faraway place; the next, you find yourself outside your favourite watering hole staring at the remnants of a broken bottle on the street, wondering, thinking, pondering, considering, contemplating; suddenly, you're on a tastefully coloured Winnipeg city bus in standstill rush-hour traffic, your moist back sticking to the vinyl seats due to overwhelming humidity, exhaust climbing through the windows and down into your lungs, choking you as you head downtown. Throughout these scenes and descriptions sweet melodies float whimsically but with great purpose like a gentle breeze flowing through your bedhead on the day you slept in and were late, giving you that perfect excuse, or maybe like a dead leaf you see being carried down a quiet brook in autumn, its funeral procession to the great unknown, a display that might have caused you to awe at the beauty and fragility of life but instead finds you saying to yourself with great relief and minimal subtlety, “Boy, I'm sure glad I'm not dead!”, or worse yet, you pass through the moment without having thought anything at all.

Balancing a homegrown-epic sound with intimate melodies and playful, carefully chosen words, Unclosing proves itself an enjoyable and cohesive collection of well-written songs that just might make you laugh, cry, remember, romanticize, contemplate, jump for joy, dance on your car, say hello to a stranger, stare into outer space, and pump your fists in the air while yelling “yessssssss!”.

Released July 17, 2007 P©: 2007 Brock Tyler
All songs by Brock Tyler © 2007 Hopeful Heartful Music (SOCAN)



Reviews

Brock Tyler's Unclosing is not for the fast and the furious crowd. The local songwriter has created an album that is dreamy, its head floating along in the clouds high above rather than tearing along the ground at street level. But, while Tyler's voice is an ethereal creature that at times reaches toward a whispered falsetto without actually going the whole distance, the music keeps one foot firmly on the ground, with mandolins and banjos keeping it all from drifting off into incorporeal nothingness.
“Sparkle Street” is a fine example of the thoughtfulness that holds tightly onto this album, taking what could pass in mere moments of real time—walking along a sidewalk, getting in a car and heading home—and elongating it to the point that it feels like slow motion. The song itself doesn't drag, though, shimmering as it sets the scene with little urge to hurry along. Unclosing is an album for reflection, best suited to a time when night has already fallen, a bottle of wine is at hand and there is no need for speed.

- Eden Munroe, Vue Weekly (see article)



Singer-songwriters are so common that one can't help but wonder if it's all been done before. With Unclosing, Edmonton's Brock Tyler hardly makes a case to argue against this statement. He borrows from Ben Gibbard, Sufjan Stevens, and many others who have come before him throughout this 11-song disc. Still, it's hard to resist a CD that was made with such care. That's not to say it sounds laboured or forced. Rather, it means that from the sweet love songs, to the ornate production, to the screen-printed CD packaging, Unclosing is the work of someone who took the time to fully realize his vision. Tyler wrote, recorded and performed everything himself, augmenting his nearly-whispered tenor and gently strummed acoustic guitar with drums, bass, banjo, claves, bells and the occasional horn part. Standout tracks include “It Will All Come Right,” “The Devil's on Horseback,” and “Hangman,” in which he uses the children's game as a metaphor for the breakdown in communication between two lovers. It’s hard to say sometimes when a singer—songwriter’s doing just a little too much soulbaring, but Tyler seems to have found the balance. Catch the Winnipeg expat live when he plays at Canadian Mennonite University on April 27.
4 out of 5

- Aaron Epp, The Uniter (see article)