Rating: - Clever words, clever tunes
Now, I'll be upfront. Folk isn't my thing. I'm OK with real ale and organic food, but beards aren't me and wailing back-to-their-roots wannabies don't really push my buttons :) But this was a present, and I knew TubThumper and I'd heard that the band had evolved into a more folky style over the years, and I was in a car for four hours so I gave it a go.
And I quite enjoyed it. Within the general folk envelope, we have a good mix of male and female vocal styles, a good breeze through various folk styles of instruments and some strong tunes with strong lyrical stories. Learning to Love is a good example, about a girl who finds comfort in the arms of several young men who, one after the other, find themselves leaving for the front. The themes are modern but in a ye olde folk way of expression, so you get Reality TV in there but not in the way that you might expect.
I don't really know how to describe a folk album to be honest. You can sing along to several of these, without much prompting. You might tap your toe and crack a smile at the words. That's good enough for me.
Rating: - back to basics
Has it come full circle for the band whose early outing were a mash-up of agit-pop folk theatre group and crass punk? Folk sensibility, the ability to tell a story and an authentic, compassionate, love and respect for the tales of the ordinary have always underpinned the work of the various versions of Chumbawamba.
This work will be no surprise for those who have known the bands work from the early days - from Danberts Unfairy Tale and back the acoutic feel has never been far from their collective hearts.
It may be a bit of a shock for the post tub thumper generation of fans - but hopefully they will appreciate the integrity and sincerity of this album. It has strength in depth, a spiritual uplifting tone and a battle cry for those of prefered bolt cropping fences to marching round in circles.
Rating: - It's folk music - seriously!
In former years they were eight anarcho-punks who were (and are) toiling towards the realisation of their vision of a world in which the concept of money has been abolished (it says so on their website). Their music was rabblerousing and clattery in a dancypunkysamply kind of way. But then at the end of 2004 they decided that they were fed up with that and four of them formed an acoustic band. And now here's the new acoustic album. And it's folk. And it's sweet, and sad. Like someone who now truly understands that the miners lost the strike. These close-harmony songs with their gentle singalong airbrushed choruses wouldn't alarm the most lacecurtained Radio Two listener, even if from time to time they're beefed up by Coope, Boyes, Simpson and John Jones from the Oysterband. The mood is often elegiac, sorrowful laments for Joe Hill, Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, Carlo Gioliani and the four hundred men who died building the Ribblehead Viaduct. The songs are short and tuneful with few solos but a very great deal of vocal harmonising. It's extremely tasteful, except for the dire song about Celebrity Big Brother. This music is not going to knock anyone out of their chair or stop anyone in their tracks, but I think the remaining Chumbs figure they've done all that for umpteen years, and now deserve a bit of a rest. You can't lark about like an 18 year old forever. They've surely put their time in and if they've exchanged their drug-fuelled all-night anarchoraves for a Barcolounger, who are we to cast aspersions. I remember John Lennon explaining that his new album "Imagine" contained the same revolutionary message but was more sugarcoated. Although the same could be said for "Tubthumping", "A Singsong and a Scrap" goes a long way further down the road, and in my imagination I already hear it wafting out of the windows of bookshelved rooms where the Guardianistas are eating their spinach gnocchi with ricotta, fortina and pecorino Romano and admit to each other that they haven't actually read Errico Malatesta or Albert Meltzer.
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