It’s been five years since the last studio album, since which time Neil McCartney to be replaced on fiddle by Simon (nephew of) Swarbrick, so anticipation has been running high as to where this might find them.
Well, the bad news is that fans of their crowd-friendly anthemic, man the barricades all come together classics may feel it comes up slightly short in that department. It’s also considerably heavier in musical terms, most notably so on Virginia Kettle’s opening blast, the relentlessly driving, fiddle scraping ‘Pick Yourself Up And Dance’ as she urgently calls out the title line as the track hits a marching rhythm and, basically, says life’s short so make the most of it.
That’s followed by the longest track, Andrew singing brother Bob Kettle’s five-minute ‘Vagabond Army’ which highlights the prominence of Swarbrick’s fiddle throughout the album and leans into their distinctive traditional and folk-rock influences for an ode to society’s outcasts and those
forced from the soil into wage slavery
by
the landlords and land grabbers who got fat on what they stole
a trademark Merry Hell song about banding together in the face of persecution and tyranny
Come all ye commoners You gypsies and revellers
You Diggers and you Levellers You refugees and passengers
You vagrants and scavengers
in what feels like something of their take of ‘Les Miserables’.
Opening with some sort of clanking percussion before Swarb steps in, the rhythmically loping ‘Only Love’ has a sort of junkyard cabaret vibe, the title pretty much telling you were the somewhat idealistic sentiment’s heading in talking about freeing yourself from
anti-social media
and
stop all those fools from dragging you down
While not as prolific as one past albums, there are, you’ll be pleased to hear, some festival-charged anthems, first up being John and Virginia’s title track, and its call to stand together and shake off the chains and the personal demons that hold you down
Well. I’ve lived beneath the clouds too long
I’ve made mistakes and got it wrong
Well, being weak, it made me strong
as it calls to
be in the now, accept the past
Embrace the fire in you at last
And tie your colours to the mast
Anchored by pulsing fiddle and keys, there’s a slightly folk-jazz feel to the intro for Virginia’s gradually swelling ‘Changing Times’ before it leans into heavier folk rock territory in which the line
only echoes of carbon will we find
carries a climate change call for environmental action
Swarbrick’s fiddle is plangent here and, bolstered by Andy Jones’ drums, he’s given his head to let loose full fiery rein on his self-penned instrumental ‘Lizard On A Log’ that marks the album’s midway point.
Then, echoing Virginia’s title, she on harmonies and Andrew on lead, Bob offers the chiming circular melody and cascading notes of the more typical ‘Changing Just The Same’ that muses on life’s flux and impermanence as he sings
All my life I have been on my way to die
This is my only certainty
and ponders
Where will you go
When the world forgets your name?
Joined by the a capella quite literal Thousand Voices Choir comprising families, groups and choirs from around the world, Andrew on lead, Virginia affords the arms-linked swayalong rousing anthem ‘Peace Can Be Louder Than War’ that needs no other explanation, the line
When a power-hungry madman orders more shelling
a fairly obvious allusion.
Goulding’s piano and Swarbrick’s fiddle introduce the more restrained ‘Join Hands’ which, as you might surmise, is another all come together number, the tempo picking up a jig pace as Andrew’s vocals enter the arena. Picking up the commonality theme, Virginia runs with it on the lazy vaudeville strum and gypsy fiddle of ‘Don’t Say I, Say Us’ that, in another era Gracie Fields might have sung, and is probably the only song to mention and anchorite from the 14th century as part of the imagery.
She and John co-wrote and Andrew sings the musically punchy and pulsing ‘Not Everything Is Wrong’, an upbeat call for reassurance when
There’s a gap that’s widening on my street
When the sun don’t shine and the ends don’t meet
that, as in the opener, calls on everyone to sing and dance together. And, keeping that flag flying, it closes with Bob’s bouzouki and Virginia’s vocals on John’s ‘Singing in the Morning’, a quasi-shanty of cascading notes and fiddle, where mention of the windy city seems less likely to be Chicago and, with a line about boats rolling in and out, more Liverpool, although Scousers might take exception to her singing
her streets are seldom pretty
they’ll not deny
there’s a beating heart, lots of love about
as it ends with the repeating title refrain like a peal of church bells.
I’m not persuaded there’s anything here to quite rival the likes of ‘We Need Each Other Now’, ‘Come On England’, ‘We Are Different, We Are One’ or ‘Sister Atlas’ (which I still think should have been on the 2023 anthology), but even so by the time it’s played through you’ll still feel like exulting in being alive and, especially if you happen to live in a Reform constituency, want to go drag the neighbours out to link hands and dance in the streets.