Don Walker
Hully Gully
Sometimes the smart thing to do would seem
to be to wait before passing judgment, and in the case of a new Don Walker
album I would like to take about five years just to be sure. Of course that
doesn’t suit the people who paid for/released the record, or the people who
promote the shows to promote the record, or the artist himself I would imagine.
Certainly all of them could validly point out that, considering Walker’s last
solo album Cutting Back – released in 2006 –
remains one of my favourite albums of the 21st century, it’d be at
very least contrary to be finicky about passing judgment on this one. So, of
course, I will naturally concede that this one’s already got me in its grasp,
and after only a few quick and cursory listens I can tell that it’s a doozy,
perhaps more pop (perhaps more facile, or maybe just less miserable) than Cutting
Back, but still brilliant.
I don’t especially buy into Walker’s
various mythologies; to a certain degree I think they are a front that keep him
away from writing about his true self – caveat being that anything other than a
very abstracted version of his true self wouldn’t really connect with anyone,
and he’s probably right. His true self is a respected and moneyed songwriter
who surely has no need to ever work again – a million miles from, for instance,
the drifter protagonist in his song ‘Young Girls’ or most of the other
narrators in his songs. For all that, there is no particular reason why a great
songwriter should write about his ‘true self’ – who cares and why would they? –
anymore than a novelist should always write autobiographically. It’s part of
the weirdness of the Australian class system that Walker, an artist with
working class origins, made his fortune and his name writing Cold Chisel hits
which remain the soundtrack to umpteen working class Australian lives and gave
everyday Australians icons like Barnesy, continues to write about people he
cannot know anymore if he ever really did, (and in fact who are probably by and
large a fiction now if they ever really existed) but now for a slender portion
of the public. Don Walker is too weird for most people!
It’s funny also how Walker is genuinely one
of the great lyricists of our time, but how often his music doesn’t come close
to the brilliance of the words – you can imagine this may well be deliberate
(not only does flashy music get in the way of great lyrics, but it would also
intrude on the laconic and/or even-tempered and/or suppressed rage of the
various stories told). The way Walker
sings is a counterpoint to that. It’s a natural voice, unusual for a singer, a
bit nasal, just slightly higher than you might have imagined, but completely
appropriate to the disappointed middle-aged man tales within. (Exceptions to
both of these include the title track and the marvelous mid-paced ‘On the
Beach’).
[END]
No comments:
Post a Comment