ALBUM REVIEWS

Chumbawumba
Ready Mades
Mutt Records 5th August 2002
@www.vanguard-online.co.uk

 Chumbas, icons of the anarcho scene for twenty years now, turning out their tenth studio album. I've always enjoyed the knees-up at a Chumba gig more than the listen at home experience but Chumba were crafty - they sent out a preview of half the songs a while back to journalists. Now, hearing the album, I find that those previewed songs have installed themselves in my brain and feel like old friends. These are political songs, songs about the struggles of living a morally decent life yet they, on the whole, avoid diatribe and preaching. The songs work fine in an impressionistic way without haranguing the listener. If you find out what the song is about, the song takes on an extra depth, reflecting and adding colour to the tale. These are songs that rail against present injustice or lament past ones. Either way, they refresh the eyes and keep us aware of the crap our 'masters' will drop on us time and time again for as long as we let them. What adds a different flavour is the addition of breakbeats and a lot of sampling of British folk songs. Each is lifted out of context yet works by adding texture. So, whatever you have heard, it's not in any way a 'folk' album though Chumba use my favourite Louis Armstrong quote on the sleeve: "All music is folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing a song." Salt Fare, North Sea is about seaship mutinies, and helpfully explains that 'strike' derived from those days; sailors would strike the sails when 'striking'. Jacob's Ladder tells of Churchill's prioritising of the Norwegian Royal Family over rescuing drowning sailors. If It Is To Be, It Is Up To Me is the manifesto. Looking back to the peasants' revolt of 1381, Chumba learn that things will only happen if we do them. For a lighter break, Song For Len Shackleton celebrates a great footballer who played great football but wouldn't act the way the establishment expected him to. Without Reason Or Rhyme is about the killing of Harry Stanley in 1999, when he was walking home with a table leg in a carrier bag. As an ex-offender, the police turned up and shot him dead in the street. He was guilty of sounding a bit like he was Irish and carrying something that COULD have been a sawn-off shotgun. The police called to him, he turned towards their voice and they shot him. To date, the family have not had any success in fighting the absurdity and horror of losing a member in that way. As the Chumbas quote at the beginning of the song - "it is a great thing that we have an unarmed police force in this country. It is perhaps an even greater thing that a force that is unarmed is able to shoot so many people." Don't Pass Go leads us to Satpal Ram's sentence for defending himself against racist attack. In When I'm Bad Alice Nutter exhorts us: "Your duty isn't to serve. Your duty is, as Mae West would put it, to enjoy yourself. This is an album of catchy songs with often impressionistic lyrics. Chumbawumba are not hectoring pamphleteers, they want to dance and they write danceable, singalong songs. If you care to dig further, the topics will lead you into an exploration of the hidden history, herstory and present day of our country. And that might make you angry and that might make you do something about it. Have fun, and remember what Emma Goldman said: If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution. Readymades by Chumbawumba is released on the 5th August 2002 on Mutt Records.

Ross McGibbon