Rubber Walrus: Terrifyingly Sexual

There is something terrifyingly sexual about Rubber Walrus. This, in the same way that there is something terrifyingly sexual about being a seventeen-year-old boy, waiting for the right time to put your hand up a date’s top. When will the moment come? Will it be more likely to happen at a skate park? Better still, maybe a bar where you heard they don’t check IDs? Are your jeans baggy enough that she’ll like you? You can’t contain the rush of thoughts and feelings. It’s terrifying. And sexy – if, in some way you really didn’t prepare for.

Regardless of my own fossilized memories of youth, petrified in the sediment of the subconscious and put on display for the smart-ass paleontologist of hindsight to mock, Rubber Walrus somehow bring me back to that period – the endless confusion, the daily epiphanies and the facepalm (oh, the facepalm!) with a sense of reassurance. And thank God. After all, isn’t that Molotov cocktail of emotion not so dissimilar from life as a yabangee living in Taksim?

Rubber Walrus’ catchy, riff-soaked rock, layered with punk harmonies and rapid key changes that flit between Britpop, surf-rock and country, offer appropriate backing to lyrics that deal with themes which seem to resurface in our current condition: Long-distance relationships, nighttime antics, bad decisions and hangover-induced regrets. When all these elements come together on stage, they perfectly illustrate the dryhump into an uncertain future that characterizes the life of a pubescent (or yabangee living in Taksim).

Even the adolescent futility of lead singer, Lewis King’s polite, clean-shaven smile, betrays the innocence of a youthful lasciviousness. And it is unbearably engaging, leading one to think of how one really can change, given the conditions.

“This one is about walking around drunk way early in morning… It’s called the Tarlabaşı Shuffle” announces the frontman, as they launch into an anthemic celebration of the good, the bad and the frustrating, in the heart of a city which can often feel as heartless as shit.

The band’s jolting, mid-song key shifts exemplify this chaos with the help of the disciplined musicianship of Arya Afshar on lead guitar, Göktuğ Candan on bass and Gjis Witdouck, keeping things notably tight on drum.

Rubber Walrus is a welcomed kind of lyrical dance therapy in a community of musicians which is finally getting to its feet in the city, throwing off the romance of the Bosphorus for the lived experience of those of us trying to get by and trying to make sense of the insensible about ourselves and our surroundings. Who amongst us can’t feel a pang of their own feelings when the singer ruefully laments that his “ass will be 5000 miles away,” precluding the blossoming of a potential love?

Rubber Walrus cop a feel of the situation at the right place, at the right time.