After a painful midlife crisis, the former Lambchop sideman went to rehab, rejected ambition and embraced lo-fi recording. It made for his most startling music yet – with a surprise Four Tet collaboration still to come

When William Tyler put out Goes West in 2019, the album minted what the Nashville-born guitarist calls “an expansive, aspirational part of my life”. It was a prettier take on the crisp heartland Krautrock of his 2016 breakout Modern Country. Both were released on renowned US indie label Merge, his home after starting out as sideman for Silver Jews and Lambchop in the early 2000s. “I was living in California,” says Tyler, 45. “I was travelling the world. My career was very much upwards.” He embraced it, for better or worse. “From 2017 to 2019, the years I was living in LA, I will fully admit that I was riding a kind of ego-type energy that was probably good for a while, but certainly was apathy for real personal growth.”

Goes West was Tyler’s attempt to capitalise on Modern Country, seeing how commercial he could possibly make instrumental guitar music originally informed by Popol Vuh, Public Image Ltd and discordant label Siltbreeze. “But there’s a glass ceiling,” he says now, in his lovely southern accent, speaking from his parents’ house in Nashville. Declining record sales generally meant it only sold as much as Tyler’s second album, 2013’s Impossible Truth. Additionally, he says, “the way I was drinking was moving in a pretty negative direction. Being in your late 30s, your body and mind start not being as resilient to it.”