Waylon Wyatt – ‘Dustpiles’ review: rising country star is here to lasso your heart

Authenticity is arguably the main currency in country music. Well, that and double denim. We’re not sure about 19-year-old TikTok sensation Waylon Wyatt’s official stance on this controversial look, but he certainly has an interesting approach to the other issue at the centre of the genre. Last year, when he graced NME’s The Cover, he explained that his emotionally wrenching tunes aren’t always about lived experience and have, in fact, been inspired by everything from Forrest Gump to the gaudy reality show Dance Moms.

Even his badass name is something of an invention, given that Wyatt is really his middle name and his real surname is Potter. Rather than indicating any kind of insincerity, all of this points towards the Arkansas-raised teen’s talent and ingenuity – qualities that are in abundance on his debut album, ‘Dustpiles’, which follows a couple of similarly stark, acoustic-based EPs.

On the closing title track, a muted ditty adorned with an elegiac sweep of violin, he lays out the vulnerability that makes much of his music so striking: “I put my heart on the table as an option / You can take it or leave it lyin’ there.” The brooding ‘But There Was A Time’ aches with the world-weary line: “Love’s a funny thing / The way it gives and takes.” There is so much pain and regret on this record – far more than he should have known before his 20th birthday.

Indeed, Wyatt has already endured tragedy way beyond his years: the budding singer was still a child when his brother, Dylan, took his own life. Dylan was a guitarist, which inspired Waylon to learn to play the instrument in tribute. This ultimately resulted in the album’s standout track ‘Everything Under the Sun’, a TikTok smash that Wyatt wrote when he was just 16. Already, the elements that make him such an exciting artist were in place – the urgency of his playing, the rawness of his voice, the catchiness of an upbeat tune undercut by deceptively lovelorn lyrics.

He’s not above the odd cliché (“Aren’t you tired of being sick and tired?” he asks on the slight ‘Otherside’) but, overall, it’s Wyatt’s gift for storytelling that really stands out here. ‘The Dress’ initially seems like a rote tale of a man picking out a gift for his significant other, until it turns out he’s actually selecting her funeral attire, a neat narrative trick that echoes Elvis’ ‘Long Black Limousine’. Whatever the inspiration behind the track, Waylon Wyatt’s the real deal.