Walrus Returns... Again!

I'm going to get the show on the road Iater this evening.

I think we all like when the reveal of a Walrus is machine-gunned out to us breathlessly, but I'm going to have to do things a little differently, at least at the beginning.

I underestimated how time consuming it is to do a Walrus, or at least I overestimated my capacity to do it at pace. 

I do like to listen repeatedly and let the tunes percolate, which slows things down, and, also, I like to write a bit about each one too - which slows it down a bit more.

And you throw in that pesky work/life stuff on top of it and, sure, you already hardly get anything important done.

So, it's going to be a slow roast of a reveal, rather than a dash.

I'll reveal the first part of Category One tonight, then part two tomorrow and then the glorious winners and losers of the category the night after - and keep bashing it out for the following category after that.

That's kinda the way I'm going to dole it out.There will be something here every night up until Christmas Day I reckon, when the Big Undisputed Top Dog will be revealed - unless social activities, or more precisely the after effects of social activities - causes me to down tools for a day; just giving fair warning.

Okay guys and gals.

There were fourteen outstanding individuals who put their money where their mouth was. I'm going to keep with the tradition of revealing the top and bottom of each round at the end: I'll keep it with the bottom & top two, but anyway:

Category One

 - A Song That Takes You Back To A Time In Your Life.

In Twelfth Place with Three Points is Electric Nitwit with Feel The Love by Rudimental 

I'd like to stress that I didn't hate this: there were just eleven songs in the category that I liked slightly more than it, and EN's reasons for including it, yeah: I get it. But I wasn't absolutely in love with it either, ngl. The song definitely has that noughties feel, with the dub a wubbin' wubbin' and the big colorful synths. I initially found the vocal sample being hammered into your head relentlessly, over and over again, to be a bit annoying and I thought, Jesus, if it stays like this, we might be in trouble here, but the song does have a few tricks up its sleeve. The unexpected trumpet solo is a classy garnish - and my favourite part -  that gives it a dose of personality and it marks that transition into the more contemplative and less brash part of the song and, okay, though that does, eventually, give way to a big push once again to the repetitive climax, I can hear why it worked for a lot of people back in the day and while it doesn't do anything beyond the rudiments for me, it's no harm, no foul.

In Tenth Place with Five Points is SineadSpears with Wonderwall by Ryan Adams.

Ah, Ryan Adams, a bit of boyo by all accounts. Having said that, I've enjoyed some of his stuff in the past - he's got so much of it that something is bound to stick - and I have always enjoyed the fact that one of his one time backing bands was called The ****.

From this point onwards, I probably have more good things to say about the songs than bad, so I'll say in the song's favour, that it does what good cover versions do, in that it puts a different spin on a song: this brings out the starkness and the minor key spareness that was there in the bones of the original, and trades anthemic euphoria for something more forlorn sounding. Though forlorn in a pretty way. 

Does it absolutely knock my socks off? No. I think it's an interesting idea, but some parts don't work for me: I'm not gone on that slightly falsetto inflection he puts on when he sings of the literal "wall" in Wonderwall - it jars with me each time. And, interesting as it is, it doesn't really radically alter my understanding or feelings of the original track - except for the outro, which slows down that beautiful simple original melody down, lets it breathe and gives it a real grandeur. I do love that part.

In Eighth Place with Seven Points is Leg End Reject with Romeo And Juliet by Dire Straits

There's plenty of good stuff in this one. The arpeggios and distinct riff are still cool and interesting to listen to. Immaculate production too, clear as day, with nothing overpowering anything else. 

And the song does have a lot of shifts in mood during the six minutes: starts off a bit sad and broken down, gets defiant and starts swaggering in the middle, and then goes through it all again, before we get a bit of forged in the fire acceptance, before that cool bluesy outro - probably my favourite part. It's a song full of memorable, well played moments.

And, yet, it kinda leaves me a bit cold overall. The first thing that goes through my head when I hear Mark Knopfler sing is "this sounds like Bob Dylan" and the whole thing just feels like a Bob Dylan pastiche to me - musically more sophisticated than Dylan for sure, but, also lacking that bit of extra depth or poetry that you'd find from Bob and, as good and all as it is in many ways, I find myself feeling a little bit unsatisfied after it.

In Fifth Place with Ten Points is Bogey Lowenstein with Plastic Hearts by Miley Cyrus

I've been on a journey with this one.

On first listen, I liked it, in a very loose way - a bit of day-glo darkness, no harm in that. Then, after listen number two, three, or four,  I wondered a bit: maybe it was a shower and not a grower and then sometime after that I went back to rating it again.

I kind of went off it because for me the song doesn't go anywhere, or didn't appear to initially. It had a lot of cool parts, but there was no emotional or musical crunch point - but then I started to realise that maybe that was actually a strength rather than a weakness.

The song's about loneliness, emotional emptiness: it's fcking grim. A life of endless late nights and total spiritual dissolution - it's a louche portrayal of someone past the point of caring about anything. So, yeah, wouldn't it be ridiculously inappropriate if it had an absolutely rip-roaring climax: the whole point is that feeling and atmosphere of boredom and, yes, foreboding.   

It was the guitars in the chorus that pulled me around. The first time we hear the chorus there's these guitar chords that waft around the background, they feel a bit disembodied and ghostly, but they're still solid enough, but then, when we get to the second chorus, they've become even more spectral and ominous and are let ring out, with a bit more menace  - and by the time we've got to the final chorus they're just a bed of pure sonic bad vibes. Subtle changes in the arrangements that convey the repetitive, but ultimately destructive story of the song, without saying a thing. That's really cool.  

And, so, everything that I kinda disliked about it became something I eventually liked, like it was a meta commentary on what the song was about.  It all sounds a little plastic: perfect, sure, she's living a plastic life! The guitar solo, despite the great tone, sounds a bit cliched: perfect, it's like you're watching a bad movie and you aren't going to be saved!

The closest I've come to being a musician is the odd bit of air guitar!