"Here To Stay" by Levi Washington

Following the very successful release last week of a remake of "Sierra Leone", this week's single from Levi Washington is called "Here To Stay".

Although in terms of style, these releases in his campaign vary considerably, a pattern is emerging to some extent in that some songs fall into a broad category of "downright unsettling" while others offer some sort of antidote."Here To Stay" is definitely one of the former, with precisely no concession to a festive season: if anything it harks back two months with it evocation of poltergeists, shadows and black dogs populating his dreams: indeed like Paul McCartney with "Yesterday" or "Let It Be", it came to him fully formed in a dream & he just needed to record it on awakening.

Regarding its musical inspiration, Levi cites (among others) the Doors and I certainly hear echoes of the eerie alienation of tracks such as "Riders on the Storm" (the last song the four Doors recorded together) with traces too of the psychedelic jazz rock sound they created. Hence it actually grooves along very nicely (I especially enjoyed the bassline which plays a prominent role) with spacey keyboard & guitar embellishments: if he released an instrumental version, you'd certainly get no clues as to the theme of the lyrics, which I applaud as contrasts have greater power than stating the obvious.

As a Christmas week song it's an unusual one, but once again I commend Levi for confounding expectations rather than being enslaved to them. I suppose he might re-release (or more likely remake) "Here To Stay" for Hallowe'en 2022, but knowing him, any single he puts out for that occasion is just as likely to be on a different subject altogether.