| Jazz |
WALRWS: James Chadwick’s Band Turns the Beatles, Dylan and the Beach Boys into Jazz Standards
I have a particular pleasure in hearing a song I’ve known my whole life suddenly sound “new” again, and that is exactly the gift this album offers, track after track. WALRWS – 60s Pop Classics with a Jazz Twist is the work of Cardiff-based guitarist James Chadwick, who has assembled a tight, exceptionally gifted quartet (sometimes a quintet) to reimagine thirteen songs from the 1960s, mostly by The Beatles, but also by Ben E. King, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, the Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach, as genuine jazz vehicles rather than simple covers. The result is a record that is instantly recognisable and yet constantly surprising, and it is, quite simply, a delight from start to finish.
Chadwick is no newcomer to this kind of project. In the early 2020s he co-led J4, a quartet devoted to jazz arrangements of Beatles songs, working alongside pianist Julian Martin, bassist Don Sweeney and drummer Ian Williams. He has long been drawn to adapting material that, on paper, shouldn’t work in a jazz setting, including Welsh hymn tunes such as “Calon Lân”. With WALRWS, he takes that same instinct a significant step further, widening the net beyond the Beatles to embrace the Beach Boys, Dylan, Bacharach and more, and recruiting a band that includes some of the finest musicians currently working in Wales: pianist Mark Sambell, bassist Aidan Thorne, drummer Liz Exell, and tenor saxophonist Josh Heaton, who steps in for Sambell on several tracks. This is also a more professionally polished outing than the self-produced J4 recordings, cut at guitarist Dylan Fowler’s studio near Abergavenny, with Fowler himself handling the recording and mixing.
The album takes its name, and its opening track, from Lennon and McCartney’s “I Am the Walrus,” spelled “I Am A Walrws” on the sleeve, as are several other titles throughout the record (whether that’s a playful nod to copyright or simply a stylistic choice, it adds to the band’s slightly mischievous personality). Chadwick has said he always found the song deeply emotive, both in its melody and in the way its shifting sections let the band establish the mood for the whole project, and it’s easy to hear why he chose it as the gateway into this music. The arrangement opens with a brief, unaccompanied passage from Sambell’s piano before settling into a slowed-down treatment built around Chadwick’s subtly reworked guitar motif. The use of jazz harmony on guitar and piano quietly transforms the song’s character, with Sambell and Chadwick emerging as the featured soloists and Exell’s drumming growing more prominent as the piece closes.
What stands out most across the album is how unforced everything sounds. Chadwick’s own description of the project, that the essence of each original has been kept intact while freshness has been added through harmonic tweaks and, in places, complete re-harmonisations, is a fair and modest summary of what he’s achieved. There’s none of the self-conscious cleverness that can sometimes creep into jazz treatments of pop songs; instead, these are warm, organic reinventions that feel like genuine affection for the source material.
Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” arrives heavily disguised, its famous bass line conspicuously absent (Chadwick has joked that bassist Aidan Thorne often threatens to play it, which would make the tune far too easy to spot), leaving space for extended chordal reharmonization and thoughtful solos from guitar and piano. “Elinor Rigby” is introduced by Thorne’s double bass alongside Exell’s hand drumming before Chadwick picks out the familiar melody and Sambell takes an expansive piano solo. “Daydream”, the band’s take on “Daydream Believer”, shifts the Monkees hit into waltz time and gives Josh Heaton his first real spotlight, his tenor sax melody halting and searching before opening into fuller, more expansive playing, with Chadwick deliberately stepping back into a comping role behind him.
Then, “S.O.S.” isn’t from The Police (the phrase “S.O.S.” is famously featured in the 1979 hit song “Message in a Bottle”), but Chadwick’s jazz extemporisation on Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound Of Silence”, built, by his own account, around an image of surfing or jogging that the band used to find its particular feel over a series of live performances leading up to the recording. “Tambourine Man” splits the difference between the Byrds’ and Dylan’s versions, settling, Chadwick says, closer to Dylan’s own reading, with Heaton’s gently probing sax taking the lead. “Blackbird” is treated with real lyricism, Sambell and Chadwick trading solos over Exell’s brushes, while “Penny Lane” rides an engaging bass-and-drum groove with Heaton’s tenor lending the tune a slightly whimsical, faintly mischievous character.
“God Only Knows” opens, cannily, with the melodic figure the Beach Boys themselves place in the middle of their original, a detail Chadwick clearly delighted in building the arrangement around. He admits to having reharmonised the tune more aggressively at first, before gigging it back closer to its original harmony, a reminder that restraint is as much a part of this project’s success as invention. “Fool on the Hill” gives Heaton another subtly exploratory feature, underscored by delicate guitar and brushed drums, while “Strawberry Fields,” a tune that has been in Chadwick’s live repertoire for years, keeps the song’s air of childhood innocence intact but renders it in a more conversational, intimate register than Lennon’s original.
The album closes with Burt Bacharach’s “Walk On By,” which moves fluidly between bossa and swing feels, a change of direction that Chadwick credits to Thorne and Exell discovering it spontaneously in rehearsal, with Heaton and the leader sharing the closing solos.
Part of what makes this record so satisfying is the evident rapport between the players. Chadwick speaks warmly of Thorne and Exell’s creativity and sense of fun, and of a rhythm section that always puts the music ahead of individual ego, qualities that come through clearly in the interplay throughout the album. His musical friendship with Sambell is longstanding and close, and the two guitar-and-piano chordal voices have clearly had to learn how to make space for one another rather than simply doubling up. Heaton, a graduate of the Royal Welsh College’s jazz course who was originally booked for a one-off gig, brings an openness and melodic instinct that earns him an increasingly central role as the record progresses, Chadwick rightly calls him a player who deserves a much wider audience.
The playing, from a true Wales-based supergroup, is excellent throughout, and Chadwick’s evident love for this material shines through every track. It’s a record that works equally well as a showcase for serious jazz musicianship and as a pure, joyful listen, the kind of album you can put on for a jazz-loving friend or a lifelong Beatles fan and know it will delight either one.
This is a genuinely lovely album, inventive, warm, beautifully played, and never less than engaging across its full thirteen tracks. It earns PARIS-MOVE’s “Great” – “Love” distinction without hesitation.
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, October 4th, 2026
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Tracklisting:
I am a Walrws
Stand By Me
Elinor Rigby
Daydream
S.O.S.
Tambourine Man
Blackbird
Penny Lane
God Only Knows
Fool on the Hill
Strawberry Fields
Walk on By
Musicians:
Aidan Thorne – Double Bass
Liz Exell – Drums
Mark Sambell – Piano, Keyboards
Josh Heaton – Tenor Saxophone
James Chadwick – Guitar/ arranger