Mike Tyler is a celebrated non-academic, post-beat poet and musician in the American tradition. Erection is his second album, creatively processed more like a novel than a recording. There is an incredible control over the work, with subtle musical innuendos and effects, as well as an incomparable sense of humour throughout. Conversational Spanish has a false ending similar to Bacharach/David’s The Look of Love, the song Man Alone is in, of course, mono, and entertainingly facile lyrics like “I’d like to throw a pie in the face of remorseless piety” and “I was standin’ by a Wilson Picket fence at ’bout the midnight hour” crop up album wide.
A recurrent theme of this record is a feeling of discovery and understanding, as if it’s laying a sympathetic palm on your shoulder and saying “There there. There there!” There’s something comforting in an understanding that comes across as understanding itself. When he first met his producer Bl’EVE this was exemplified; different backgrounds, different musical tastes, but an incredible feeling of shared understanding.