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’ prop up album wide.
A recurrent theme of this record is a feeling of discovery and understanding, as if it’s laying a sympathetic pa...
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