Question: You're a hard-edged, politically-inclined Northern anarcho-punk band, often aligned with Crass and their axis. The assumption is that you'll make a ranty, shouty punk album to reflect this stance. How will you respond to the expectations?
Answer: You send the lads in the band off to a hut in the Dales to record a totally a capella album called "English Rebel Songs 1381-1984" featuring absolutely no traces of punk rock (or indeed guitars, drums and such filthy things either, for that matter). Obvious really. The end result being that - not for the last time - you will wrongfoot and challenge both your supporters and detractors. Hoorah!
Such was the reaction when celebrated Leeds anarcho-popsters CHUMBAWAMBA first unleashed "English Rebel Songs" on an unsuspecting public all of, ooh, 15 years ago (1988). It was the sound of fantastic pigeonhole avoidance at the time, but in this improved, re-recorded and re-issued form it's even better post-Millennium.
The original "E.R.S" featured only the male Chumbas voices, but the new version broadens the scope to include the female counterpoints. Indeed, Lou Watts' ever-gorgeous vox lead the way on "The Bad Squire" and the unbearably sad closer "Coal Not Dole," providing two of the highest peaks on an album towering with pinnacles. A few subtle musical textures have now also been introduced, like the gentle acoustic framing "The Triumph Of General Ludd" and the flecks of acoustic'n'accordion filling out "The Bad Squire."
The dates are relevant, too, as this collection of songs - initially inspired by recordings of folk pioneers such as The Watersons, Swan Arcade and The Wilson Family - takes in a timescale running chronologically from medieval airs ("The Cutty Wren") to the Thatcherite scourge responsible for bringing the British coal industry to its' knees - as tackled with poignancy on "Coal Not Dole."
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As their Marx-influenced Leeds forerunners the Gang Of Four so eloquently put it, history's "not made by great men" and what's so powerful about "English Rebel Songs" is that these beautifully arranged and vividly performed songs celebrate the real heroes: the people who WERE the backbone of the country without ever ending up in the history books. Indeed, how anyone can deny the relevance of track like the First World War cannon fodder tale "Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire" or the cautionary, industrial revolution factory workers' song "Poverty Knock" is beyond me. Look around you: modern day stories of redundancy and injustice abound in the media.
To dismiss Chumbawamba as 'worthy, but boring' (or some such epithet) is to miss the point entirely, as they continue to make perhaps the most resonant - and human - politically-orientated music around. "English Revel Songs" is rich in history, strong of spirit and still as valid as hell.
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