O'Hooley & Tidow
Single: The Last Polar Bear
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 1
Website: www.ohooleyandtidow.com

I really do like songs that work on multiple levels and in those terms, "The Last Polar Bear" is a veritable block of flats, there are so many different ways to interpret the song.

You could choose to interpret the song as a twenty first century take on the Andy Barnes classic, "The Last Leviathan". Whilst his song was about the deliberate inhumanity inflicted upon one intelligent creature, by another supposedly intelligent creature, "The Last Polar Bear" is more subtle in its approach as the danger is less obvious.

Like the whales before them, the polar bear has become a poster child for the environmental movement, and like its predecessor song, I hope "The Last Polar Bear" gets recorded and reinterpreted by singer after singer and band after band if it gets listened to and makes people think.

If "The Last Polar Bear" was just that, it would be worthy, but the song is more than a potential environmental anthem, because at its heart it's a love song, expressing both requited and unrequited love.

O'Hooley & Tidow in both performance and lyric have given the listener enough space to interpret the song in their own way. In the absence of a companion or lover, how important is the relationship with the environment on both an emotional and physical level? Where does love sit, is there a barren waste or a polar landscape, you decide. I've decided that it's a beautiful song worthy of anybody's money.

Neil King