Album review: Strawberry Blondes – Fight Back

You may not believe me, but I really do try to come with an open mind to every record I’m sent for review. Naturally it’s harder at some times than others, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t confess to holding low hopes for retro-oi gutter-punks Strawberry Blondes after seeing them support Millencolin last year. On the basis of the few songs I caught that evening, I fully expected Fight Back to be a collection of obvious and tired pub-punk clichés decorated with simplistic political ramblings.

You may also fail to believe me when I say that I was disappointed to be proved right… but then I’m not here to tell you what you should believe. I’m here to tell you my opinion… and my opinion is that this is one of the most pointless albums I’ve heard in years.

Fight Back begins with the well-worn “this is Radio Freedom” sample that the KLF used (about two decades ago, in case you’re counting along at home), and then swiftly moves on to by-the-numbers street-punk of “Revolution Radio”. Shouty-snarly lyrics (with that Tim Armstrong-esque slurred delivery, as if being sung around a particularly large mouthful of vege-burger) and “whoa-oh-oh” gang-chorus bellows from the local football terrace; palm-muted three-chord 4/4 progressions; melodies so obvious you could sellotape them to your kids in order to make cycling at night more safe. And the lyrics, the message…. sheesh. I mean, come on, Strawberry Blondes – if this is raw revolutionary leftism, shouldn’t you at least be dealing with contemporary media channels? Revolution Radio? Even the Iranian election protests were conducted by Twitter, for fuck’s sake.

The second tune (Fight Back’s title track) has almost exactly the same melody as the first, just with one note changed. Elsewhere, there’s a slightly ska-roots-rock feel to “Manners and Respect”, some random horn parts in a few places, and “007 / Rudi” is effectively a cover of the punk-rock pub-DJ favourite by The Specials stripped of all its cheery bonhomie and bouncy sunshine… but otherwise the whole damned album has the dull uniformity of a row of soldiers awaiting inspection. Punk proved to be a musical philosophy with lots of expressive potential, but only once it had been decoupled from the crudely politicised posturing and braggadocio of its original 1977 incarnation and the mid-eighties revival thereof, and Fight Back pretty much encapsulates the latter, as if the last thirty-two years of popular culture never happened, and Sham 69 still sounded fresh and exciting.

“But Paul, they’re talking about serious social issues!” I hear you say. Well, maybe; it doesn’t take a genius (or even talent) to point out social issues – even the hacks who scribble for the Murdoch papers can pull that off, albeit for very different reasons – but it takes a little more thought and clarity to suggest a better solution to said problems than quitting your cubicle job and spiking your hair. All the lessons here are at least as old as the sound being used to convey them. “Culture Sucks The Life Out Of Me”? Really, guys? So turn off the fucking television already. Try sampling some culture that hasn’t been plucked from the rotting throat of Thatcher’s Britain like a particularly stale bit of crusty bread; lots of things have happened since then, y’know, some of them good and some bad, and trying to change the political landscape with a punk record is like trying to lower the number of back-street abortions in Latin America by lobbing condoms over the wall of the Vatican.

One thing to make plain here is that I’d classify myself as a small-l liberal, and therefore an ally of class struggle, political freedom and so forth. Sure, speak truth to power, fight the system – these are things I fully advocate everyone should do (if they want to, natch). However, I’m not convinced that penning fifteen Fisher Price pub-rock rants is going to achieve either goal, nor encourage any but the most simplistic of thinkers to do so. Strawberry Blondes were apparently radicalised at an early age by the 1984 UK Miner’s Strikes, and that’s a fine and worthy thing to to have at the core of your philosophy… but it might help them to look at the evolution of political thinking in the intervening years, especially the continued failure of radical socialism to show any signs of being a sustainable solution to capitalism’s obvious flaws. But hey, how politically progressive of them to have sold one of their songs to the soundtrack of a straight-to-video movie glorifying violent football hooliganism – right on, you guys. Right on. I can hear Babylon crumbling as I type.

And if you get upset by people referring to punk as a bankrupt cultural vehicle, devoid of even the vaguest semblance of protest and defiance it once possessed before becoming a multi-million-dollar industry that put money in the pockets of The Man by selling kids unattainable dreams (which sounds quite a lot like capitalism, AMIRITE?), please bear in mind that it’s uninspired and lumpen tributes-to-Rancid like this one that perpetually reinforce that view. Just so’s you know. Feel free to scowl and yell and spit on the floor – for all its terrible flaws and inequalities, this is a free country, especially for white boys – but don’t be surprised when no one pays any attention to your points when you do. The kids scraping copper from circuit boards in Bangalore landfills can’t see your mohawk… and if they could, they’d recognise it for the sign of comfortable privilege that is actually is.