Levellers – Static On The Airwaves (On The Fiddle Recordings)
Having been a long standing fan of the band since first seeing them at Brighton Zap Club in September 1990, the wait for new material since 2008’s ‘Letter’s From The Underground’ has been a long one. Following the commercial success for the band of the 1990’s (including the 1994 Glastonbury Festival headline slot), the hits may have now fallen off but the touring has continued at full speed. Every year my wife and I look forward to a couple of UK tours and they are veterans of the festival circuit including their own Beautiful Days Festival.
Now that the background to our love of the band has been detailed, what of the new album and how does it rate against the others? ‘Static On The Airwaves’ is their tenth studio album and one that is a definite return to form dealing with the world today in their own special punk-folk-rock way. The album starts with the title track, a 49 second track that talks of the sadness on modern life, which then moves immediately into ‘We Are All Gunmen’, sung by Simon, a track that deals with how life could be without so many injustices. In an ideal world mention is made of many things including ‘no politicians, just compassion’, ‘celebrity is out of fashion’, ‘banker’s pay is justified’ and ‘everyone drinks socially not ‘cos they’re crippled emotionally’. The track is passionately delivered and will become a live favourite.
‘Truth Is’, the recent single (available on red vinyl 7” still and worth buying!) starts with one of Jon’s fiddle introductions and develops into a classic Levellers lively track. It deals with life from the working class perspective and how the truth is that if their work is not done then the system falls. Lines include ‘truth is if I don’t grow it, then you can’t eat it’ and ‘and if I don’t aim it, then you can’t shoot it’.
‘After The Hurricane’ reverts back to a more traditional folk feel with a rousing chorus and this leads onto the stand out track of the album (in my opinion), ‘Our Forgotten Towns’. This would sit comfortably on ‘A Weapon Called The Word’, ‘Levelling The Land’ or ‘Levellers’, albeit that the sound is more mature and modern. It includes haunting bass from Jeremy and plenty of fiddle and deals with the abandoned communities and high streets of our boarded up towns. The lines of the chorus ‘Our forgotten towns are calling, the death of Albion they’re mourning, cracks showing in the market halls, dying in the shadow of a shopping mall’ say it all.
‘No Barriers’, whilst not being as upbeat as some tracks, has a great all round band sound and has the feel of classic Levellers circa mid 1990’s. This leads onto ‘Alone In This Darkness’, a more bleak sounding slower track, with a decent chorus, albeit that it is my least favourite track but perhaps a few more listens and a live rendition are required.
‘Raft Of The Medusa’ is a sea shanty that tells the tale of the Méduse, a 40 gun frigate of the French Navy, that due to the incompetence of the naval officer, struck a bank and became a total loss. Following the wreckage, passengers and crew tried to evacuate the ship on an improvised raft and became helpless when the frigate’s launches gave up towing them. Only a handful of the shipwrecked survived the ordeal of the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation, dehydration, cannibalism and madness. This is yet another track that would sit comfortably within the classic Levellers catalogue.
The history lesson continues with ‘Mutiny’, which tells the tale of Jesse Robert Short, a British troop involved in the 1917 Étaples Mutiny in France. For four days British soldiers refused to obey orders and held demonstrations at a training camp in northern France. This passionate track is classic folk song material and is certainly worth a listen.
Next up is ‘Traveller’, an acoustic track with superb strings arrangements and which is a classic traditional folk sounding track. This is followed by ‘Second Life’, another fast track with all members of the band in full flow, which slate the virtual reality computer world including ‘Cos it’s better than real life, even better than the real wife’.
Finally, there is a reworked updated version of ‘The Recruiting Sergeant’, which on listening could easily be the Pogues at their awesome best and will be well worth seeing live (it also includes backing from the excellent Divokej Bill). It tells the tale of how a thief is caught off guard after a few drinks by a recruiting sergeant and signed on the dotted line to join the army. The music is superb and includes many recent amendments to the traditional lyrics bringing in the Afghanistan crisis, ‘by Hercules transporter to fight the Afghani’, ‘now I’m sucking dust in Helmand, dug in Lashkar Gar’ and the ultimate advice is ‘so don’t follow me to die boys in bloody Kandahar’ and ‘so if you see a recruiting sergeant run, run away’. This ending to the album is classic rousing lively Levellers and is destined to be a great final track when they perform live.
Overall, whilst I cannot say this is the best Levellers album ever, I can say that it is an album well worth buying and shows that they can still produce lyrics that are relevant to the modern world and performed superbly. Perhaps it is the best album from the Levellers since ‘Zeitgeist’ in 1995, certainly it is a pretty consistent album of not only traditional folk but also punk folk. I say go out and buy the CD and / or vinyl (although perhaps I should now add go out and order a download for your iPod / Smartphone or whatever else you choose to listen to music on).
Reviewed by Ian Davis
Static On The Airwaves is released on 25th June 2012 via On The Fiddle Recordings
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