Reviewed by Paul J Zickler
Released: 1980 Scott Wilk + The Walls Scott Wilk + The Walls Genre: EC & the A's Rating: 3.75 out of 5 Highlights: Radioactive Suspicion Shadow-Box Love Familiarity Breeds Mutation Well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what Scott Wilk was listening to when he and The Walls made this, their first and only record. If the album cover isn’t blatant enough, the opening track makes it crystal clear: this is a straight up imitation of This Year’s Model / Armed Forces era Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Lead track and first single Radioactive sounds more than a little like any number of EC songs, and the similarities don’t stop there. Victim of Circumstance has an opening organ riff that’s only slightly more different from Watching the Detectives than Ice Ice Baby is from Under Pressure. Although he’s from Chicago, Scott nails the vocal nuances, and the band captures the wiry tension and release of Messrs Thomas, Thomas and Nieve. The production, by Michael Omartian (who also helmed Christopher Cross’s zillion selling debut), doesn’t quite match the sizzle and snap of Nick Lowe, but it’s not distracting or over-the-top most of the time, so it works. Yeah, it works. As long as you’re OK with the concept of “I’m going to make an Elvis Costello album now,” this is a pretty good time. The down side, as always, is that listening to such an obvious copy makes you long for the original, especially when the lyrics are never going to match Costello’s sardonic wordplay. “Every day I sit by the window / so close and yet so distant / How can I know when to sit by the window / when she’s so inconsistent? / Will ya look at the clock / Just look at the clock / will ya / How could she be so careless?” Scott has put some real effort into finding syllables, words, and rhyme schemes that make him sound like Elvis, but the overall result falls a bit short. Still, I found myself unable to resist the ramshackle energy of Familiarity Breeds Mutation: “Well will you look who’s talking / that’s when I feel like walking / When you ask me about my intentions / I give into that sweet temptation / Electrical motivation / It’s a political situation / Familiarity / Familiarity / Mutation!” I should add that not EVERY track is a direct Elvis ripoff. Shorting Out is a pretty obvious Talking Heads ripoff – the same two chord turnaround that ends the chorus of Take Me to the River does so here, and Wilk manages a pretty convincing David Byrne. Instead of cool new wave organ, the solo break features spooky new wave synth. And the high pitched “Uh uh ah” cries at the end could have been sampled from Psycho Killer. There’s more than a little bit of Joe Jackson in Instant This, Instant That, with its prominent piano, finger snaps and insistent bass drum thumps. Suspicion veers dangerously close to power pop, especially after Wilk drops the Pump It Up vocal affectations of the verses and belts out a full throated last chorus, sounding more Springfield than Costello, if only for a moment. And while Shadow-Box Love captures the slow burn of Elvis’s early ballads, it also has a delicious, jazz influenced middle section piano solo, much more reminiscent of later EC albums or again, Joe Jackson. One of the most fascinating developments of the past decade in live music has been the rise of the “Tribute Band” as a viable entertainment option. Back in the day, if you played covers and tried to sound like the originals, you were considered something of a poseur, like an Elvis Presley imitator working the Reno casino scene. Everybody was supposed to carve out their creative niche I suppose. Nowadays, there are four or five really talented Fleetwood Mac tributes gigging on any given weekend in the Seattle/Tacoma/Portland circuit, and the thing is, people LOVE that stuff. Why wouldn’t they? It’s great music played by great musicians, having a great time. This is that, only one step further. A few years back, one of my former students wanted to write a musical about a rock duo who were secretly spies, working undercover. He asked me if I could throw together some songs that sounded exactly like Hall and Oates without being actual Hall and Oates songs. It was a real challenge, but I dove in and had a blast. In the end, the project fell apart, but I still have at least a couple of tunes I’m pretty happy with stashed somewhere deep in my iTunes folder. My hat is off to Scott Wilk and The Walls. This is a sweet little album, and if you’re anywhere near the EC fan I am, you’ll probably get a big kick out of it.
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