Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Bombarded as we are by the big picture, the rush of information and the knowledge that as one story finds itself winding up, another will come round and find ways to make us anxious, make us feel permanently on edge. An ever-growing cycle of news requires whimsy, someone else’s reflections about a love, a reminder that not everything in life revolves around destruction and mayhem, that occasionally, every now and then, you must acknowledge and embrace the news from the other side of darkness and take on, with a smile, someone’s pet love.
It is to Stuart Todd’s wonderful musical alter ego, Shadow Captain, that such a song arises, and in Hey Django the listener is given the opportunity to once more be serenaded by a piece of music that has as much to do with understanding another human being’s memory as it does relishing a track that flows with ease, that achieves one of the ultimate expressions sought by an artist, alongside making you think, the music and lyrics make you smile.
It is with eloquence and passion that Hey Django achieves this remarkable feat, and whilst art, and especially music should reflect the times and hold the world to account, it must also offer the chance to breathe, to find ways in which to relieve the tension that is always and forever building.
It is perhaps to the likes of Gilbert O’Sullivan that the observation of another time and place, of talking of love without conditions, that the song deeply reminds the listener to, and whilst it is delivered in a glorious fashion that Stuart Todd aka the esteemed Shadow Captain calmly produces. There is also the twist that makes the listener understand that the tale is far more than just a shaggy dog story, it is there, bold and definite, that it is a lament for our own fragility and mortality, and while the song is uplifting, worthy of that smile, it also holds a lasting melancholy which is quite superb.
Hey Django does not set out to replace the problems of the day, but it does, elegantly, provide a different perspective in which to see how we keep our own memory alive.
Ian D. Hall