Tim Walker

Tim Walker is an Auckland-based singer/songwriter and his album You/Me kicks off with Lullabies. It is easily the biggest delight here – and I did not enjoy it. This earnest singer/songwriter stuff gets called folky or folksy or folk-derived because, well, what else do you call it. This is Alex Lloyd-derived softy-pop, limp and vague and when we have people in the country like Greg Johnson and Kurt Shanks who can do this sort of thing – and manage to actually write songs to attach to it, thereby transcending (or at the least bypassing) the softcock nature that plagues this near-genre – there’s, ultimately, little room for Walker.

People will perhaps say there’s “a nice voice” or that something is “catchy” but this is just said because people like to be polite.

There’s no reason for you to hear this album. It’s boring – and feels, mostly, like the worst John Mayer material. And though I think the reports of Mayer’s instrumental prowess have been greatly exaggerated it is true that he can play a guitar. Sometimes well. Occasionally bordering on tasteful – it’s all Stevie Ray Vaughan-lite and diet Kenny Wayne Shepherd though. But anyway, at least Mayer has that ace up his sleeve. Walker has nothing. And that’s what I heard with this album. Unfortunately. Nothing.