Dumbing Up

Like one of his heroes, Bob Dylan, Karl Wallinger may not be the finest singer the world has ever heard, but he certainly is one of the planet’s finest pop music composers.

Wallinger’s songs are confounding buggers, though. You listen to tracks like the opening ‘Here Comes The Future’ for the first time and think, ‘half decent song, catchy enough, but is there enough substance there?’

Soon enough, it winds its way into your head and before you can say ‘I was a teenage Waterboy’, you’re humming it on the bus.

Similarly, ‘What Does It Mean Now?’ reeks of an inoffensiveness that even your granny couldn’t gnash her false teeth at, but behind it all there’s a sophisticated pop genius at play.

‘Another Thousand Years’ is delivered with a Wallinger falsetto and a faintly Beatles-ish swirl. ‘High Love’ has echoes of a certain Mr Dylan, but it is on the wonderful imitation/flattering ‘Who Are You?’ that Wallinger’s Bob-worship really comes to the fore, a homage of sorts where even his delivery is reminiscent of a young Zim.

The bizarrely titled ‘You’re A Hurricane, I’m A Caravan’ is also excellent, even if his metaphors are a tad unusual – try "You’re a skyscraper, I’m a roofing tile" on for size.

There’s also the jaunty, almost music-hall feel of ‘All The Love That’s Wasted’ and the magnificent album closer, ‘Always On My Mind’, one of Mr Wallinger’s finest musical moments, on which he waxes angrily for over eight magical minutes.

Dumbing Up isn’t musically ambitious, and you couldn’t exactly call it groundbreaking, but it is another example of classic songwriting from one of the true masters of the genre.