Richard Tyler Epperson has always been comfortable moving between intimacy and scale, but ‘One Thought Away’ pushes that contrast into much darker territory.
Here, the Salt Lake City songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer begins with piano, exposed vocals and the sense of someone trapped inside their own thoughts. From there, the song keeps expanding until that private unease becomes something much harder to contain.
The opening feels isolated and fragile, but the arrangement soon shifts into a more rhythmic, conversational passage as bass, drums and electronic elements enter. He lets the track change shape repeatedly, pulling instruments away and bringing them back in until the song starts to feel increasingly unstable.
And by the final third, restraint has largely disappeared, as distorted guitars, synths, live drums and layered vocals build into a dense wall of sound, deliberately allowing the production to become chaotic. Yet the result still feels immersive without becoming overworked.
He spent close to a year reshaping the track, eventually returning to an earlier mix by Roman Styx and rebuilding it from the stems. Some parts were stripped back, others were replaced, and the ending was allowed to become considerably more unruly.
Longtime collaborator Nate Barnes takes over drums during the second half, helping drive the song towards its most aggressive section, while Epperson handles the bulk of the remaining instrumentation himself.
There’s also an interesting contrast with its larger collection The Open Book Sessions, which explored a much more stripped-back acoustic side of his songwriting. Here, the vulnerability remains, but the world around it has become larger, darker and far more distorted.
It sounds like Richard Tyler Epperson opening the door to an entirely new world, and immediately letting that world start breaking apart around him.