Charlie Hall, “Invisible Ink.”

Charlie Hall has spent most of his music career making other people sound good. Hall is a multi-instrumentalist, but he’s best-known as the drummer for Grammy-winning band The War On Drugs. He has a reputation among other musicians as a generous support player. Now, Hall is releasing his first solo album, Invisible Ink, and he’s enlisted friends from all over the globe to play on the record. The list includes Chris Walla from Death Cab for Cutie, Thomas Hedlund of Phoenix, James Elkington from Tweedy, and, of course, members of his own band.

“My friend Quinn [Lamont Luke], who produced this with me, said to me a couple of years ago, ‘I want to know what your music sounds like,’” Hall said. At the time, Hall had to stop and think about it, because he was so used to supporting others. “I like taking somebody else’s idea and helping them, because I play all these instruments, and I enjoy the process of working with people.”

He didn’t have a secret backlog of tunes he was yearning to release.

“But when he said that to me, it was somewhere in between a challenge and a dare – and a generous offer,” Hall said, adding that Quinn simply offered to record him and see what happened without any pressure. What ended up happening was Invisible Ink.

Presented with the chance to go solo, Hall couldn’t resist involving others.

“There’s something so beautiful about the process of collaboration and making music with people and trusting people,” he said.

Recording an album became a chance to put together “his dream band,” with many of his favorite musicians helping out. He sent some songs to friends to listen to, including Elkington, who jumpstarted things by asking if he could put some pedal steel on a track. Hall enthusiastically assented, and when he received the results, he felt as if “all of a sudden this thing’s in technicolor!” He then sought to have other friends “put their spirit on a track.”

He’s not planning to release any songs ahead of the album’s release on May 12, so you’ll need to take our word for the description of these songs. The album is, by turns, ambient, jazzy, psychedelic… and instrumental. So how did Hall, who also sings in a close-harmony chorus group, The Silver Ages, end up making an album full of songs with no lyrics?

“I guess it is a little weird for somebody like me, who is so crazy about vocal harmony,” he said, adding that he wants listeners to focus on the vibrations of the music. There are some wordless, angelic vocalizations, to add texture, but no words, so as not to distract from the music. “Ultimately, I wanted to make something that sounded pretty.”

Charlie Hall is also a drummer who loves drum machines. Most of the tracks on Invisible Ink started with him playing around with one.

“I like trying to make a drum machine breathe in a different way, manipulating it with echo and reverb,” he said.

He said he likes setting a beat and then finding ways to play around it. He also employed dual drummers on some tracks.

“I have a few of my favorite drummers in the world playing on this with me,” he said, including Hedlund and Andrew Barr of the Barr Brothers. “They just bring their own thing to it. Everyone feels time and space differently.”

He raved about his collaborators, using descriptors like “truly a genius,” “a beast,” “a force of nature,” and “a beautiful player, and just a beautiful human being.” Hall’s generous, joyous spirit was infectious. Speaking with him, it’s obvious how he’s made so many friends in the music world: by being himself.

Hall said he doesn’t plan to tour the album, but hopes people listening will be transported to some of the places that inspired these songs. He’ll soon be joining up again with his bandmates in The War On Drugs, who he said are “like family” to him, to go back on the road in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

The former teacher said he’s grateful for every moment of being with his band, playing in front of people. But for his own album, he just wants to spread the good vibes.

“[If a listener] finds some joy in it, that’s all I could ever hope for,” he said, smiling.

Follow Rachel Alm at Twitter.com/thouzenfold and Instagram.com/thousandfold.