Barry Walker Jr – ‘Paleo Sol’ album review: An ambient country reflection
In a world inundated with a seemingly never-ending noise, Barry Walker Jr has crafted an ambient country album that is a welcome sense of calm in the storm.
The Skinny: Walker is a pedal steel guitarist who hones his sound in country and folk traditions.
When he’s not playing with the collaborative projects Mouth Painter and North Americans, performing with Rose City Band, or expanding his solo repertoire, Walker is a geologist and teacher based in Portland, Oregon. For this project, he enlisted bassist Jason Willmon and drummer Rob Smith, while Walker picked up the pedal steel, electric and acoustic guitars, letting his vocals rest on this record. United, they form the trio of sounds that blend together on Paleo Sol.
“I try to compose for a person to be able to close their eyes and make their own film in their head,” Walker explained to Willamette Week. Plenty of musicians conceptualise projects that teeter on the cinematic, reimagining sound structures that could become cohesive with spliced memories. On the other end of the spectrum, Paleo Sol rests in an ambient bucolic soundscape, allowing the quiet, natural surroundings to take centre stage.
From the beginning, ‘Quiessence’ suggests that the album’s compositions will be boundless, focused most on curating a hyper-specific energy. This song, in particular, echoes an early morning, soundtracked by droning guitars matched with drums that threaten to build in sound but fade into the background. Each song that follows is a blank slate and, rather than filling the space with noise, each instrument is allowed to come into their own, conjuring an overarching sense of calm and letting the magic transpire.
‘Son, Don’t Brighten The Bear Creek Rhyolite’, named for a type of volcanic rock, has a soft sway to it, similar to its follow-up ‘Leaving Lower Big Basin’, which opens with the whine of a guitar reminiscent of a wistful Americana, a tune that could easily fit among the Laurel Canyon crowd of the 1970s. The middle of Paleo Sol blurs together a bit, though not to its discredit. Rather, the songs work in tandem, echoing a tranquil state. ‘Sentient Lithosphere’, a 12-minute opus, is a vast landscape of quiet tones of the pedal steel and hushed drums, not so much forming a backbone as percussion usually does, but instead rolling along with the untethered chords.
The Verdict: Paleo Sol came together with the intention of inspiring a collection of images in the listener’s mind, recalling peaceful memories and provoking a meditation on life and the meaning of such. The album is simple and reflective, offering a chance to sit back and parse through the compositions, choosing what stands out as most poignant.
Standout Track: ‘Leaving Lower Big Basin’
Release Date: January 30th, 2026 | Producers: Barry Walker, Rob Smith, Jason Willmon | Label: Thrill Jockey
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