It sounds like something that a pretentious arsehole would say (I am only one of those things to be fair) when discussing opera or something: “the real value is in what they don’t play”. All joking aside, it’s the type of nonsense that makes my blood boil.
And yet, Walking Papers. See, they present you with a problem. Because, Jeff Angell and his boys are a rock n roll band like no other. They are a rock n roll who don’t rock. Or roll, especially come to that. But they brood. In the darkness. But they are, very much a rock n roll band. So go figure.
The real value, surely, is in what they don’t do.
Everyone knows the history, right? Barrett Martin and Duff McKagan were in the band (rule one of journalism is you never assume knowledge, but if you don’t know them, then you aren’t worthy of my explanation), but this version of the band has neither.
What “The Light Below” has is actually hard to pin down, beyond that it is a huge, sprawling thing (the 12 songs are well over an hour), ambition, which Walking Papers manage to pull off entirely on their own terms.
“The Value Of Zero” is best described as “darkly blues”, and its line of “trust no one, question everything” seems to frame the record as a whole.
“What Did You Expect”, lurks. Purely and simply. Angell’s piano sounds menacing. And his lyrics, sound like poetic musings. Make no mistake, though, these are catchy songs, with choruses to die for. All part of the magic.
The primal wail of “Divine Intervention”, with its low-slung lick clocks in at over eight minutes, but like the rest, it is astonishingly compelling. Dan Spalding had some mighty bass boots to fill, clearly, but his work on the wonderful “Stood Up At The Gates Of Heaven” propels that one along, while the ecclesiastical theme seems to continue with the hymn-like “Going Nowhere” – and indeed, we must praise Benjamin Anderson for his essentially MVP display throughout. His keyboard work is incredible, as is Gregor Lothian’s sax solo.
Even on an album as broad in scope as this one is, then, “Creation, Reproduction And Death” all nine and a half minutes of it, feels like the centrepiece. And if nine years of following this band has taught me to expect the unexpected, then I still was taken aback by the drum and bass flavours of “Money Isn’t Everything”.
“Rich Man’s War” changes the vibe totally. Strutting, not a million miles from Royal Blood, while there’s something of the shadowy, dank Victorian cobbled streets about “Where Did I Go Wrong?” – or a rather less verbose comparison might be Nick Cave…..
The last three could be seen as medley, after a fashion. There’s the instrumental “The Other Shoe”, the slow building “My Thoughts Are Not My Own”, and the fragile, piano led “California (One More Phone Call)” which is the most conventional song here, if you like, a pretty conventional ballad, it is nonetheless, brilliant. “She wants a change of scenery” offers Angell, and that seems to drive this. The desire to make something truly brave, truly original, and utterly compelling. A clean break, as it were.
On “The Light Below” they’ve done just that.
Rating 9.5/10
