Walrus Returns... Again!

Guys, guys, guys….. We are back.

And I promise you, we're going to be here every day from now with something until this Walrus is done: provided there's no more hurricane force winds and after effects that temporarily force some of us back into the 1950's…. maybe I shouldn't even joke about this….

Anyway, where was I?

(clears throat)

In Fourth Place with Eleven Points is StrawbsM with Messy By Lola Young.

I like this tune a lot, even if some of it sounds a bit familiar, maybe even kind of musically - if not quite derivative - then heavily reminiscent of other songs. The bass at the start does sound exactly like Every Breath You Take... come on, it really does, to the extent I wonder if they are actually sampling it.... sure, look, let's call it a homage and move on. And while I do like the chorus, sort of, maybe it gets aired too often and thoroughly, to the point where it bores me a little: it's strident alright, but not all that musically arresting. It's a bit predictable, considering how surprising other aspects of the song are.

So, why after all that pooh-poohing am I putting it so high.... I dunno, well, no, that's a lie: I do know.

It's very real in a couple of ways. She's a very engaging storyteller and the whole thing lyrically flows like a series of painfully identifiable moments from a frazzled life that we call emphasise with. And I feel for her, but I also kinda feel for her other half. I don't know if she's right or maybe she isn't. It all sounds a bit, well, messy. I think that gives it a multifaceted quality that elevates it beyond the usual kiss-off to an ex type of anthems you hear all the time everywhere everyday. You can interpret every line as being directed inward at her herself, as well as outward: listen to the very last line, the self recrimination is positively dripping off it.

It leaves me in a place where I don't know how to feel about it. A little of the old multivalence. And I enjoy music that leaves me feeling lost and confused.             

In Third Place with Twelve Points is jluv with You Have Been Loved (Live) by George Michael.

I like George Michael. I'm not hugely familiar with his music - beyond the big hits, which, admittedly, he did have a lot of - and the occasional deeper cut which I come across. I like him as an individual. He was his own man and seemed like a genuine guy, a deep soul. I always think back to an interview that I've seen on Youtube of him and Morrissey being interviewed together on some 80's music show on the TV and they're talking about Joy Division. Morrissey is all posing and posturing and kind of has nothing perceptive to say whatsoever about the band, whereas George - in his feathered haired pomp -  starts talking about the music in a way that makes you realise he's actually tried to engage and be emotionally moved by it. He comes across as a more intelligent and less stuck up guy than Morrisey. And in all the other clips and bits I've seen of him, I just like his vibe. George was a real one.  

This is a devastating song. Musically, very classy, pure adult contemporary, but the music is really just adornment around the sentiments and the lyrics. There's an unbelievable amount of pain in this song, but it's not histrionic - it's restrained, even resigned, which gives it a thoughtfulness that you have to meet on its own terms. In a nutshell it's George thinking about the life of the mother of his dead lover - but it's about a lot more too. It's about the struggle of love - the things she would have had to do to raise a child, seemingly without a lot of help - how much she loved him. And now how, despite all her faith, hope, and prayers the child she loved is dead.

The amount of compassion and generosity of spirit is off the charts. And it's deep in a way that stops you short and makes you think: can faith still exist after the death of a child? What guilt should a survivor of a bereavement have? Some of the imagery sticks fast in my mind: "So, these days, my life has changed/ And I'll be fine (And I'll be fine)/ But she just sits and counts the hours/ Searching for her crime" - there's a lack of resolution that speaks to the lack of closure and messiness of life. I have to put this one up near the top because it's a guy putting his soul up on a plate and admitting that he's a flawed individual - "If I was weak, forgive me/ But I was terrified" and that looking at the impossibility of faith, as he sees it, and instead of seeing it as inspiration, he still just sees how that impossibility remains in his mind; but with compassion and not scorn. And that's some deep stuff.   
         

And there were two… Rikand & Irish Aris. Those who are last will be first.

And the one next to last will be last.

In First Place with Fourteen Points is Irish Aris with Lazarus by David Bowie.   

As soon as the entries started coming in I sorta had a feeling that this would take some beating to be knocked off eventual top-spot for round three and, sure enough, yes, I can't look past Lazarus as top-dog for this category.

I wouldn't say I'm a massive Bowie fan. He does have an incredible back catalogue, some of which I really love - Station to Station is just, awww, man - but in its totality I don't like every single part of his work. And I never went through a hero worship phase with Bowie.

I knew people - still know people - who love/loved him. Aside from the music, they seemed to really love the idea of him: a chameleon, who was always a bit of an enigma. I never really fell in love with that. His distance, or irony, meant I could never fully identify at some level, truly heart and soul, with his music. So despite all of the amazing facets of his musical life, I wouldn't have put him in my personal pantheon of artists who meant a lot to me. 

But, yet here he is top of the list of a round about sincerity.

I remember being woken up by the (then) nearest and dearest on the morning in January 2016 when his death was announced. I thought they were having me on: "No, he released an album the day before yesterday... that can't be right?"....

No, absolutely it was. And of course I was stunned by the news. Bowie was like this ageless figure who existed and persisted and seemed to always do his own thing outside of the norm. Normal physical rules like death didn't seem to necessarily be something he'd ever have to worry about, like it is for the rest of us plebs.

But, no, he was dead, he was mortal... wow, wild.

Even more wild was the fact that he'd released an album all about death just right before. Nothing in his life became him like leaving it. Beyond the surprise of his death, I found myself by being pretty awestruck at the panache, the sheer balls, to put something out there like that into the public, all while being desperately ill and knowing that it would only sink in for people and achieve its full impact after death. 

That to me was - and still is - completely mind blowing. And it was typically Bowie: it didn't move me in my heart, it was more like an intellectual admiration. In the end, I had to hand it to him - that thing that left me always a bit uninvolved by his schtick: that distance of it all, its own awareness somehow of it being a performance and he himself being a type of knowing media character; rather than being a blood and guts ordinary soul under it all - was the one thing that, in the very end, made Lazarus such an amazing piece of not just music, but of art.

Take the lines of that first verse: Look up here, I'm in heaven/ I've got scars that can't be seen/ I've got drama, can't be stolen/ Everybody knows me now. Now we've had plenty of songs in this round looking death square in the face, but we haven't had any coming from the other side.

Bowie knew the craic. He knew he was dying. He knew that most people would rush to this song in the immediate aftermath of this death and everything would suddenly acquire a whole different level of meaning. This guy is already talking to us from the beyond, he's already anticipating that, and he's also anticipating the debates and the media fervour that'll start spilling out after his death. Not many people get to such an exalted position where they can foresse their own passing into legend, just as it's about to happen. And to do it all in such a cold and dispassionate way - without any of the histrionics - cements how magisterial a final move this song was. Lazarus indeed.

I think the real message in the song is Bowie grappling with the idea of his future of not being a living, breathing human being, but becoming an idea, a media fixture, something that from that point on will exist in memory and people's minds: with no fixed position on planet Earth - and I'll be free/ ain't that just like me. That line - ain't that just like me - is the one that always gets me. Bowie was famously unknowable and ever-changing and I read this line as Bowie saying you'll never know me, it's almost a taunt and this final Swan Song has left him with the final word: adding another layer of mystification to him and his legacy. That's the freedom, even in death: there's always going to be that mystery and he's knowingly adding to it here. That's next level stuff.

I've barely even touched upon the musical content of the song itself. It has a menacing and melancholy mood, but Bowie himself, vocally, never seems to be saddened or looking for sympathy. He's not trying to mine pathos. His voice does sound ghostly, but almost has this sanctity about it because of that. That final vibrato on his final line is awesome. I think it's a song with great textures. The hot and the cold mixed together very well. The cold: the gothic stabs of guitar, the melevont bed of organs, the icy keyboards. The hot: the really fat sounding drums, the melodic bass and sax. The song is so darkly atmospheric. And I adore how we get the emotional climax of the sax solo - with the deft interplay between drums and bass - before the song winds down gradually with the sounds of those filamental instrumental strings echoing out creepily - going out like the sparks from a fire being extinguished in the dark. 

Great idea cdeb - thank you!

Surprisingly tight up there at the top. Toight.

Let's get the show back on the road guys with Round Four. Was quite busy with work etc - was out foreign and all - but am back on Terra Firma for a while again now.

In Eleventh Place with Four Points is Irish Aris with Moscu Esta Helado by Esplendor Geometrico.

I appreciated this, rather than actually liked it. I suppose it does conform to a chilly, minimalistic mode that befits the category. And I feel it's an opening vista into a musical world that I don't know much about, but that probably has some golden nuggets waiting in there to be found: 80's European Synth Wave. 

And it seems to exist as a piece to make you ponder about the agitprop of it all: references to Moscow, audio clips of Soviet speeches, all wrapped up in forward looking sound from a country emerging from a right wing political dictatorship... hmmm, if I had a beard I would stroke it thoughtfully right now...

But, it didn't really grab as a piece of music tbh. I suppose it's not really meant to - it's more a collection and juxtaposition of cool sounds. The bass line that runs through it throughout is undoubtedly pretty sick and I do like the synths that sound like sheets of metal being bashed around in the wind.

If you vibe with it it's got a neat mantra like quality to it and, like I said, it's an interesting audio snapshot of a particular scene from a particular time and place… you can imagine impassioned people arguing fiercely, gesticulating wildly, about the fate of the world and what is to be done, in a basement club somewhere while this blares in the background