Tyler Lyle to Release THE TRANSCENDENTALIST, First Solo Album in 7 Years
The Atlanta-based artist's new single follows his previously released track "Pondicherry."
Atlanta's own Tyler Lyle, songwriter, vocalist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist best known for his work with synthwave standard bearers THE MIDNIGHT, has announced the October 23rd release of The Transcendentalist, his first solo album in seven years. Along with the news Lyle shares 'Death's Commuter Blues,' which follows last month's 'Pondicherry.'
Across 10 deeply personal tracks of The Transcendentalist, Lyle wrings beauty from pain while exploring change, healing and the search for meaning. The tracklisting was whittled down from 40 self-recorded songs that were produced by Lyle and recorded with the help of Grouplove's rhythm section of Ben Homola (drums) and Daniel Gleason (bass), plus Rhett Shull from The Midnight on guitar, with T.J. Elias engineering.
'It was a little gang of wonderful musicians,' Lyle says. 'I just felt so happy and light that the people who were playing their instruments were the best people in the room to play their instruments. It wasn't me trying to passively play bass or a synth pad or program drums. We recorded most of those tracks live. It was just such a fulfilling process that it just felt like this was the right way to release it.'
While Lyle is best known for his work with The Midnight, his career began as a solo singer and songwriter. His 2011 album The Golden Age & The Silver Girl, was named one of NPR World Cafe's top albums of the year and took the Georgia native to Los Angeles where an arranged songwriting session in 2012 introduced him to Danish producer Tim McEwan and led to the formation of The Midnight. What Lyle has described as a 'side project that took off' went on to become a formidable touring act, with Lyle serving as the band's primary vocalist, guitarist and lyricist. Throughout The Midnight's rise, Lyle never stopped writing on his own. The Transcendentalist brings him back to the confessional singer-songwriter roots that preceded the band, now informed by more than a decade of touring, writing, producing and the profound changes in his life away from the stage.
At the heart of The Transcendentalist is one of the most difficult periods of Lyle's life. While becoming a father and navigating a new chapter personally and creatively, his wife Anna was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma after doctors discovered a massive tumor in her chest. What followed was a yearlong battle with cancer that would ultimately end in remission, but the uncertainty, fear and shifting perspective of that experience found their way deeply into Lyle's songwriting.
'That feeling was accompanied by these lucid moments of presence that I've never had before,' Lyle says. 'You're driving home from the doctor's and just seeing how vivid and stark the colors are in your neighborhood for the first time. It's kind of shocking to be in so much internal pain and also so close to – I don't know – the true nature of the world or something like that.'
That heightened awareness of life's fragility runs throughout The Transcendentalist, but so does the healing that followed. Anna's journey from diagnosis to remission provides part of the album's emotional arc, alongside Lyle's own experience of becoming a father, growing older and recognizing that he had crossed what he calls a 'specific threshold' in his life. Rather than an album simply about suffering, The Transcendentalist ultimately finds Lyle looking for meaning in what remains — family, change, the beauty of the present and the unexpected places where healing can be found.
'It's all a singular journey toward a healing that I didn't think I was headed towards,' says Lyle.
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