Walrus Returns... Again!

Arghus · 19-03-2025 11:56PM

In Ninth Place with Six Points is JP Liz V1 with Wintertime Love by The Doors.

https://youtu.be/pqpUwR84Nmg?si=b4IUaPKsZRWQEpH2

Is this a bit of a bad joke on my part I wonder, a dereliction of good taste.

After damning a song concerned with the battle against misogyny with some watery faint praise, I then go right ahead and rate a song sung by the absolute crown prince of dinosaur cock-rock himself - who is blatantly angling for a shag throughout - immediately above it?

Ah, well, guilty as charged I guess.

I have a bit of a soft spot for The Doors, always have done since the teenage years of being stoned out of my mind on a semi-regular basis. Don't get me wrong I do cringe a bit - okay, a lot - when I look back and my days of thinking The End actually spoke to me in some way are long gone - and thank god they're gone, Jesus Christ! - and they are in a lot of ways extremely dated and of their time sounding - even by the standards of Sixties acts, but I still find they have a lot of absolutely killer songs.

They were a damn good band, even if it was kinda despite themselves: Five To One, When The Music's Over(possibly my favourite tune of theirs), People Are Strange, The Unknown Soldier, LA Woman, Hello I Love You.... There's a long list of great stuff. They were great, instinctive musicians, and, like or loathe him, Jim was a very charismatic vocalist.

Is this particular song absolutely up there with their best, to my ears? Probably not. It's a bit old fashioned. It's a bit slow, it's essentially a waltz. It falls into that mini-genre of doors songs that sound like Germanic show tunes and it's a bit unthreatening and the best Doors always has a bit of the darkness about it, and it is very short. But I still find it enjoyable enough. I like the faux harpsichord stuff in it and that - very brief - bridge before the final chorus is cool, with the bass being played under those awesome sounding chords, as Jim vocalises vaporously and wordlessly on top, it's a pretty cool sounding passage.

Arghus · 21-03-2025 12:56AM

In Eighth Place with Seven Points is StrawbsM with My Lover's Gone by Dido.

https://youtu.be/Libbd7BCBHE?si=8GsbqhWzO9ilbgr0

Dido... now that's a name I hadn't come across in a while. I hadn't heard this song before and when it first came on in the playlist that I had made the first thing that struck me immediately was its - to my ears - Irish folk influence. Particularly in the first part of the song, it sounds very reminiscent of a traditional lamenting ballad. I was taken by surprise when I realised that this was the Dido song among the bunch. AFAIK the Dido family had a bit of Irish heritage - they must have picked up a bit of musical inspiration from the oul sod somewhere down along the line.

Did it blow my mind entirely? Maybe not, but it's pretty decent and achieves what it sets out to do. The first half of the song, with the chords, her ethereal voice and the atmospherics ebbing and flowing is undeniably alluring, even if it's a classically depressing story of a dead lover. The second half is moderately effective I think - her voice takes a back seat and it becomes more about the instrumental textures. It's not uninteresting, but it's not totally unexpected: it's all very downtempo and turn of the century. Reminds me of Portishead a bit, but less alien and icy.

It's an attempt to give a contemporary twist - drum machines, reverbed arrangements - to something with its roots in the past- the lament. An experimental tune in its own way really. But I'm not sure if I really felt it big time in the emotion department: the lyrics are the same few lines repeated and the self-consciously "hip" outro kind of takes away from its actual emotional impact - but I still found the first half very intriguing and I kinda admire the attempt to do something interesting with the form, even if it didn't entirely work for me.

SineadSpears · 29-03-2025 12:51AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123277074#Comment_123277074

I had a little essay typed out but came to my senses & realised it's best if I keep my thoughts to myself with this one 😆 very, very unlike me.

I will simply say - I really like her voice. & I love the video too, that's what made me click on the video the first time.

Reading through the comments & there's loads of references in there that I hadn't noticed until they were pointed out.

cdeb · 24-04-2025 10:53PM

I wonder is Arghus snowed under again?

(Which is no problems of course - there's a serious amount of work gone into this; can only imagine how much time it's taken…)

Irish Aris · 24-04-2025 11:32PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123386983#Comment_123386983

Yeah, I have done one before and it definitely requires quite a bit of time.

I'm considering doing one after Arghus, have found the categories and all. Just need to find the right window were I will have time to listen to the submissions properly

Arghus · 26-04-2025 11:22PM

And we're back….

Yeah, I was a bit busy again, at the end of last month and the beginning of April and it was a bit hard to get back into the swing of things… But, just like I said last time, this time it won't happen again.

In Seventh Place with Eight Points is cdeb with A Better Place to Be by Harry Chapin.

https://youtu.be/MazXSlekckI?si=g_fLpJUg5ef4eGbi

This song is A LOT.

Its quality of letting it all hang out is kind of part of its charm, but also, why I find the whole thing just a teeny bit exhausting all at the same time.

US Seventies singer-songwriter, giving us lots of details - it made me think a bit of Billy Joel: if he was a bit more focused on the broken-down and a less nauseatingly slick individual.

I do enjoy that the song is a warts and all shaggy dog (no pun intended) story that isn't all that bothered about taking its time, in taking its time, and taking us on a small-scale odyssey.

We get a lot of states of existence over the course of eight minutes: depressive, melancholy(they're not the same), cynical, love-struck, lustful, hopeful... drunk. And I have to give a song that tries to cram in every kaleidoscopic facet of a particular station in this life a thumbs up at a basic level.

And the lyrics are pretty good. Lots of little literary flourishes and some hilarious imagery - "The waitress took her bar rag and she wiped it across her eyes" - and Harry Chapin's got an endearing nice, aw shucks, shat upon, honesty to his voice.

But, yet, we do get a lot here. It goes on for a long time. It does sound to me sometimes like a story you'd get into with a randomer at a bar, which may be intermittently funny or endearing, even wise, but it can be hard to hang onto with rapt interest from start to finish. I do like a lot about the song, but I do think, for all the good things, it lacks a bit of depth.

It's a bit of a craic and it doesn't really fill me with a surfeit of pathos, or, despite some definitely funny lines, hit me squarely in the funny bone. And at the end of it all, despite all the dotted and, in their own way diverting details, is it that amazing of a story? Was it simply dying to be told... I'm not sure. Over the entire course of its run, it doesn't really grab me by the shorts and curlies and damn well force me to bend to its will and pay it attention, whether I had planned to or not. My attention wanders, even though when I zone back in again, I find wherever I am at the time to be an enjoyable enough thread in the tapestry in its own right.

I endorse it overall though. It's got personality. A whole eight minutes worth of personality. Do I always find that personality absolutely scorching to be around? Ah, maybe not entirely... but at least it's something.

Walrus Returns... Again!

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